Computational Immunology Research Associate

The University of North Carolina Wilmington, the state's coastal university, is dedicated to the integration of teaching, mentoring, research and service. Widely acknowledged for its world-class faculty and staff and continuously recognized at a national level for scholarly excellence and affordability, UNCW offers a powerful academic experience that stimulates creative inquiry and critical thinking and a community rich in diversity, inclusion and global perspectives.

A public institution with nearly 18,000 students, UNCW offers a full range of baccalaureate- and graduate-level programs, as well as doctoral degrees in educational leadership, marine biology, nursing practice and psychology; and many distance learning options, including clinical research, an accelerated RN-to- BSN program, an Executive M.B.A. program structured for working professionals, and the nation's only bachelor's degree program focused on coastal engineering.

The university's efforts to advance research and scholarly activities have earned UNCW the elevated designation of "Doctoral Universities: High Research Activity" institution (R2 University) by the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education.

UNCW has been part of the University of North Carolina System since 1969.

Work typically involves developing specific plans for computational experiments in the assigned area of study, reading literature relating to procedures, modifying and adapting procedures to suit the particular project objectives. Carries out computational experiments independently, records and interprets data of experiments and procedures of self and others. Work requires sufficient theoretical knowledge in immunology and coding skills to enable position to work effectively in the area of inquiry, independent judgment in planning and conducting details of the experiment, and evaluation and limited interpretation of results. Work may include the training and supervision of other technicians or students in performing the specific phases of experiments and is performed under to general supervision of a principal investigator who reviews work through periodic conferences and reports in terms of its contribution to the project objectives.

Experience in biophysical chemistry techniques on peptides and model membranes. As a guide, graduation from a four-year college or university with a major in a related science and three years of laboratory experience in the area of research assigned. Work requires hands on experience in the specific area of work assigned.

The duties of this position requires following skills:

* Skilled in data pipelining with Snakemake

* Ability to finetune and integrate LLMs into existing software

* Competent with PyMOL, PyRosseta, and other molecular visualization software, including the ability to write scripts and perform complex protein structural analyses

* Skilled in bioinformatic analyses and able to utilize programmatic access to common biological databases to fetch and analyze sequence data at scale.

* Able to conduct and interpret multiple sequence analyses and structural alignments, utilize BLAST, and assess efficacy of other bioinformatic tools

* Prior use of protein structure prediction and protein design with deep learning models such as AlphaFold or Homology based prediction

* Strong working knowledge of molecular biology, with a focus on immunology and immunoinformatic analysis.

* Prior experience with epitope prediction models and strong knowledge of the principles of vaccine development

* Strong research skills and familiarity with the research process, specifically as it relates to drug development and design

* Experience with AWS and server setup

* Required programming proficiencies: Python, C++, C, R

N/A

Please Note: This is a temporary position.

This posting will close at 11:59PM (Eastern time) on the posted closing date. To receive full consideration, please be sure you have fully completed the entire application, including the 'Work History' section before you apply for this position. Failure to answer all required questions will cause the system to disqualify your application. Applications must be submitted through the online application system to be considered.

Attach the following materials as an Adobe PDF document including:

The length of the assignment will be based on department need with the possibility of continuation.

Temporary assignments cannot exceed 11 consecutive months without a full 31-day break from employment.

Employees in temporary positions are not considered permanent state employees and do not earn leave.

Temporary employees are subject to the Affordable Care Act guidelines.

For more info/to apply visit http://jobs.uncw.edu.

At the University of North Carolina at Wilmington ( UNCW), our culture reflects our values of inclusion, diversity, globalization, ethics and integrity and innovation and we are committed to providing equality of educational and employment opportunity for all persons without regard to race, sex (such as gender, gender identity, marital status, childbirth, and pregnancy), age, color, national origin (including ethnicity), religion, disability, sexual orientation, political affiliation, veteran status, military service member status, genetic information, or relationship to other university constituents - except where sex, age, or ability represent bona fide educational or occupational qualifications or where marital status is a statutorily established eligibility criterion for State funded employee benefit programs. UNCW believes that embracing the unique contributions of our faculty, staff and students is critical to our success and paramount in being recognized for our global mindset.