Postdoctoral Researcher – mRNA Therapies and MPRAs

About the role

The group of Prof. Georg Seelig is looking for a highly skilled and innovative researcher with experience in performing and analyzing massively parallel reporter assays (MPRAs) to join its team. The role focuses on designing novel mRNA, gene or cell therapies with increased specificity, and involves genome engineering of human cells and machine learning-guided design of proteins or cis-regulatory elements.

Key responsibilities

• Design and test synthetic cis-regulatory elements and other modalities that target the activity of mRNA or gene-based expression systems to specific cell types.
• Perform genome engineering of human immune cells.
• Design and run MPRAs with sequencing readouts to find cis-regulatory elements that give high mRNA stability or cell-type/state-specific expression, and develop MPRAs for primary immune cells.
• Develop and apply novel single-cell analysis techniques, including readout of reporter assays.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams to advance testing of nucleic acid therapeutics.
• Analyze data, prepare detailed reports, plan follow-up experiments and present findings internally and at conferences.
• Prepare technical reports, summaries, protocols and quantitative analyses.
• Write scientific manuscripts for peer-reviewed journals and patent applications.
• Mentor and train junior scientists and technical staff.

Required profile

• Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering, Bioengineering or a related field.
• Proven track record in sequencing-based high-throughput assays such as MPRAs and Sort-seq to identify functional protein variants, cis-regulatory elements or characterize transcription factors.
• Strong background in molecular biology and mammalian cell work, ideally with primary human immune cells or induced pluripotent stem cells.
• Experience with next-generation sequencing, flow cytometry and related high-throughput techniques.
• Strong bioinformatics workflow experience for sequencing data analysis.
• Proven experience with data science, Python programming and machine learning.
• Ability to communicate complex scientific data to diverse audiences and to work independently within a team.