Postdoctoral Research Fellow – Vaccines Process Research & Development

Job Description

Job Description

Be a part of the legacy: Postdoctoral Research Fellow Program

Our Research Laboratories’ Postdoctoral Research Fellow Program aims to be a best-in-industry program for industrial postdoctoral researchers, designed to provide you with an academic focus in a commercial environment. With the resources, reach, and expertise of a large pharmaceutical company, postdoctoral researchers will be positioned to excel in an institution committed to breakthrough innovation in research and discovery.

What You'll Be Doing:

Our Research Scientists are our Inventors. In our Company's Vaccines Process Research and Development (VPR&D) organization, we drive cutting edge science to develop life-saving vaccines for infectious diseases and oncolytic therapies for treatment of a wide variety of tumor types in combination with other immunotherapeutic modalities. Specifically, this role will be part of a strategic initiative in understanding and developing cell lines for improved production of vaccine strain and oncolytic viruses.

As a Postdoctoral Research Fellow within the VPR&D organization based in West Point, Pennsylvania, you will work with a highly collaborative, multidisciplinary department to develop and characterize cell lines and production systems for live virus vaccines and oncolytic virus therapies. The postdoctoral researcher will perform lab-scale research and process development/scale-up studies, and develop novel, robust, efficient, and scalable cell culture processes for live virus vaccine and oncolytic virus production.

In this laboratory-based role, the candidate must be willing to work with infectious agents and/or pathogens, after appropriate agent-specific training. This position may require occasional off hour and weekend work. In addition to the core responsibilities outlined below, the candidate will be expected to keep careful notes, comply with all required training, and maintain a focused attention on personal and team laboratory safety. Additional expectations include a willingness and ability to learn new techniques and perform tasks in parallel.

Using innovative thinking, state-of-the-art facilities, and robust scientific methodology, we collaborate to discover the next medical breakthrough and manufacturing technology to positively impact patients. The successful candidate will be a passionate scientist with strong academic fundamentals and a drive to develop new vaccines and therapies to improve human health. The researcher will have the opportunity to interact with various experts across the Company network, present at scientific forums (both internally and externally), and publish novel findings in peer-reviewed manuscripts. The successful candidate will be expected to demonstrate the ability to clearly communicate results of his/her work in both verbal and written formats.

You will be expected to work closely together with fellow researchers in our team, but should also be capable of independently developing and implementing their own ideas and experimental strategy. A wide range of skills will aid in these efforts, so interested applicants with a variety of relevant scientific backgrounds are encouraged to apply.

Responsibilities include but are not limited to:

• Conduct laboratory bench work to execute, optimize, and troubleshoot cell culture processes
• Continuously maintain mammalian cell lines and meticulously document cell line characteristics and stability as a function of passage level
• Design, develop, and execute focused studies to enable the characterization of adherent and suspension cell lines (gene expression profiles, cell surface receptor abundance, etc.)
• Evaluate conditions and parameters for optimizing live virus production, including culture media development and/or optimization
• Interpret data and present results for team / senior management discussions and at scientific symposia/meetings/conferences (both internally and externally)
• Lead the authoring of literature review(s) and original research manuscripts for submission to peer-reviewed journals
• Interface with multidisciplinary groups and coordinate activities with Bioprocess R&D functions, Vaccine Basic Research / Discovery, and various analytical and cell biology functional groups within our Company

What You Need:

• Candidates must currently hold a PhD OR receive a PhD by fall of 2021. Degree should be in Chemical Engineering, Biomedical Engineering, Bioengineering, Cell Biology, Biochemistry, Microbiology, Virology, or a related discipline
• Strong aseptic skills/technique for culturing adherent and suspension mammalian cells without antibiotics
• Experimental knowledge and skills in analytical techniques for characterizing cell line gene expression and cell surface receptors (some or all of the following: RT-qPCR, digital PCR, flow cytometry/virometry, immunofluorescence microscopy, SDS-PAGE / Western Blot, cell-based virus titer assays such as TCID50/plaque)
• High throughput sequencing experience including analysis tools/pipelines, such as those used for RNA-Seq
• Demonstrated history of publication in peer-reviewed journals
• Strong scientific acumen, with ability to solve problems via independent planning, design, execution, and interpretation of experiments

It's Great If You Have:

• Scientific understanding of cell biology and virology relevant to vaccine production, including mammalian cell metabolism / physiology and molecular biology techniques for engineering cells (particularly in context of interrogating cellular interactions with viruses)
• Experience with different mammalian cell culture media formulations
• Familiarity with bench scale bioreactors and/or mini bioreactor systems (e.g., Ambr15/Ambr250, DASbox, or similar)
• Background in experimental techniques for genome editing or perturbing gene expression (e.g., CRISPR, siRNA/shRNA, plasmid-based overexpression)
• Experience working with viral systems within a BSL-2 environment
• Be energetic, enthusiastic and self-motivated, with a strong desire to both learn and to educate/train staff in techniques used in pursuit of the postdoctoral project
• Strong attention to detail
• Willingness to work on occasional night or weekend, where experimental design requires it

We are a research-driven biopharmaceutical company. Our mission is built on the simple premise that if we “follow the science” and that great medicines can make a significant impact to our world. And we believe that a research-driven enterprise dedicated to world-class science can succeed by inventing medicine and vaccine innovations that make a difference for patients across the globe.

Who we are ...

We are known as Merck & Co., Inc., Kenilworth, New Jersey, USA in the United States and Canada and MSD everywhere else. For more than a century, we have been inventing for life, bringing forward medicines and vaccines for many of the world's most challenging diseases. Today, our company continues to be at the forefront of research to deliver innovative health solutions and advance the prevention and treatment of diseases that threaten people and animals around the world.

What we look for ...

In a world of rapid innovation, we seek brave Inventors who want to make an Impact in all aspects of our business, enabling breakthroughs that will affect generations to come. We encourage you to bring your disruptive thinking, collaborative spirit and diverse perspective to our organization. Together we will continue Inventing For Life, Impacting Lives while Inspiring Your Career Growth.

INVENT.

IMPACT.

INSPIRE.

mrlpostdoc

VPRD

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If you need an accommodation for the application process please email us at [email protected]
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Merck & Co., Inc., Kenilworth, NJ, USA, also known as Merck Sharp & Dohme Corp., Kenilworth, NJ, USA, does not accept unsolicited assistance from search firms for employment opportunities. All CVs / resumes submitted by search firms to any employee at our company without a valid written search agreement in place for this position will be deemed the sole property of our company. No fee will be paid in the event a candidate is hired by our company as a result of an agency referral where no pre-existing agreement is in place. Where agency agreements are in place, introductions are position specific. Please, no phone calls or emails.

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Relocation:

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Requisition ID:R93790