Associate R&D Scientist

Responsibilities

Location(s) Woburn, Massachusetts Status Regular Job ID REQ-054995

This position presents an exciting opportunity for an Associate Scientist with life sciences education and experience. The candidate is expected to substantially contribute to Research and Development projects in a leading ISO13485 – certified biotech company. The successful candidate will be part of a multi-disciplinary R&D team that integrates the expertise and experience of biologists, chemists, physicists and mechanical and electrical engineers. The candidate will support research and development of next generation genome sequencing and protein analysis platforms, including reagents, consumables and instrumentation systems.

Essential Responsibilities and Position-related Expectations

· Planning, execution and analysis of experiments to prove feasibility of new ideas and concepts.

· Generation of highly reproducible data, data analysis and presentation of results and conclusions.

· Participation in prototype testing and assistance in product development and commercialization efforts.

· Migration of manually performed workflows to semi- and fully automated processes including the Company’s Adaptive Focused-acoustics (AFA™) instrumentation.

· Ability to understand and to follow Standard Operating Procedures to support day-to-day activities such as QC tests of instrumentation and reagents.

Examples of day-to-day tasks include but are not limited to:

· Sample prep, i.e., isolation of biomolecules such as nucleic acids (DNA and RNA) and protein, downstream processing and analysis, with and without use of Covaris’ proprietary AFA™ technology.

· Analysis of nucleic acids, such as quantification using various methods, including absorption, fluorescent quantification, qPCR and digital PCR mediated assessment of quantities and quality, electrophoretic molecular weight analysis, NGS library construction and sequencing runs on Illumina platforms.

· Analysis of proteins, including trypsin digests, ELISA assays and fluorescent quantification.

· Microbial and eukaryotic cell culture to develop novel sample prep workflows for manual as well as automated workflows.

· Handling and processing of clinical specimens, such as whole blood, plasma, FFPE and fresh/frozen tissue, microbial cultures.

As a Successful Candidate You will:

· Be a self-starter, needing minimal daily supervision.

· Be able to work towards given goals and deadlines.

· Have excellent oral and written communication skills.

· Demonstrate solid analysis skills including Excel spreadsheet-based analysis and documentation, basic statistical knowledge.

· Have experience in basic molecular biology techniques (PCR, electrophoresis, nucleic acid or protein isolation and purification).

· Be knowledgeable about sterile cell cultures techniques.

· Possess a strong team spirit and willingness to work in an interdisciplinary group of scientists and engineers.

In addition to the essential responsibilities listed above, the employee may be required to perform other non-essential functions. Employees are required to follow any other job-related instructions and to perform any other job-related duties requested by their supervisor.

Qualifications:

· Master's degree with 2 years or bachelor's degree with 3+ years of experience in biology, molecular biology, biochemistry, or a related life science field.

Preferred Qualifications:

o Experience in industrial settings and/or basic knowledge of document-controlled development processes is a plus.

o Experience with NGS data analysis and NGS Technology in general is a plus.