I would like to recruit one highly motivated individual to be the first
person to work with me in my new research lab as either a technician,
postdoc or research assistant. You can have a BS, MS or Ph.D. and the
salary will be commensurate with your experience and what I think you can
bring to my lab. The salary range is from $22K to $32K and includes
benefits i.e. health insurance, you must be a US citizen, and must be
willing to work in the Bethesda, MD area, and must be willing to start by
1 Feb. 1997 or sooner. Funding is available for two years and possibly
longer. A first-time postdoc would be expected to write postdoctoral
fellowships. The perfect individual for this job would have to be
competent in molecular biology i.e. in designing and constructing
plasmids, making and purifying fusion proteins from bacteria, PCR, site
directed mutagenesis and random mutagenesis methods, doing plasmid preps,
etc. He/she would also have experience running protein and agarose gels,
western blotting, working SAFELY with radioisotopes, and performing
immunofluorescence experiments. Experience with EM a plus. He/she would
have experience working with Saccharomyces cerevisiae i.e. growing strains
in liquid and on solid medium, doing gene disruptions, tetrad dissection,
and experience with 2-hybrid or other genetic screening methods would be a
plus. You have to be willing to work with rabbits and mice (these will not
be your co-workers and the lab doesn't have mice, I think?). The fusion
proteins will be used to make polyclonal antibodies in rabbits and I will
also want to "raise" ascites from monoclonal hybridoma cell lines in mice.
The person would also be familiar with the Macintosh OS and be able to
learn Filemaker Pro, Nisuswriter, DNAStar software, Photoshop, Canvas, and
Cricketgraph. The candidate need only have a subset of these skills and no
one is expected to have all of them.
One project which you may work on involves defining the function of a new
protein required for exocytosis in Saccharomyces cerevisiae. If you work
on this project, you would be expected to epitope tag the protein for
immunoprecipitation experiments and for immunofluorescence localization,
make temperature sensitive (or other conditional mutant) alleles of this
gene, and look for genetic interactions between your mutants and other
late-acting sec mutants. You would make fusion proteins to make polyclonal
antibodies in rabbits and do genetic screens, either 2-hybrid or
suppression screens of your mutants, to look for interacting gene
products. A postdoc would be encouraged to develop his own project
consistent with the goals of my lab.
I am Daniel TerBush and I have been recently appointed Assistant Professor
in the Department of Biochemistry at the F. Edward Hebert School of
Medicine at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in
the Bethesda, MD. My appointment started 1
November 1996. If you respond, I will send you a follow-up E-mail with
more
information about USUHS. I did my Ph.D. work in Dr. Ronald Holz's lab at
the
University of Michigan studying exocytosis in bovine adrenal chromaffin
cells. I have recently completed a postdoc in Peter Novick's laboratory at
Yale University where I have identified a multiprotein complex required
for exocytosis in yeast (TerBush and Novick, 1995, July, JCB 130:
299-312).
To respond to this advertisement, send a cover letter and C.V. to
danter1 at aol.com. In the cover letter please confirm in the first paragraph
that you are a US citizen (unfortunately I can't fund a non-US citizen),
that working in the Bethesda, MD area is OK and that you can start by 1
Feb. 1997. Tell me in a general way about your work experience and cover
anything that isn't necessarily easy to fit into a C.V. (For instance, I
started a Macintosh computer repair company as a graduate student to make
extra money but this is not something that fits nicely on a scientific
C.V.). Also, tell me what level of education you have BS, MS or Ph.D. and
the type of position you are looking for. Depending on the number of
responses I receive, I may not reply right away but I will try to respond
to all applications. You will have to be willing to come to me to be
interviewed since I do not have funding to pay for your visit. Please keep
this in mind when if you respond to this listing.
Finally, I just wanted to comment on why the "position title" is not more
focused, i.e. postdoc only, or technician only, etc. Since you are the
first person I am hiring, I would like someone with a lot of technical
skill i.e. a postdoc or experienced technician. But I am willing to
consider someone less experienced with a burning desire to learn and do
research and willing to commit at least two years of time to my lab. If
you are applying as a postdoc, currently I do not have a technician. I
expect to have additional funding in April which will allow me to hire
one, but until then (or if the funding falls through) you will have to be
willing to share with me and any graduate students the "lab chores". I
have the attitude that if something needs to get done then I'll do it
myself and postdoctoral candidates and research assistants should share
this attitude. If you are applying as a technician, you will be getting
stuck with a lot of the "lab chores" as part of your job responsibilities.
However, as money becomes available I'll try to hire a lab aide to make
solutions and pour plates to give you more time to do science.
