Post-Doc Research Associate, Computational Design

Antigens are molecules capable of inducing an immune response, making them crucial components in vaccine design. For optimal effectiveness, antigens must be soluble, stable, and properly folded, ensuring they can be efficiently produced and retained in a biologically active form. These attributes not only facilitate an accurate immune response but also improve the shelf-life and potency of vaccines, highlighting the importance of precision in antigen engineering.

The goal of this 2 year Post-Doctoral role is to harness cutting-edge computational techniques to innovate and optimize protein-based properties within diverse antigen design projects. Our objective is to work with both bacterial and viral targets, focusing on critical elements such as bacterial membrane proteins and viral fusion proteins, to create effective vaccines. You will be involved in developing protein-specific properties, including expression, stability, and solubility, which are essential for advancing our understanding and capability in vaccine design.

By employing methods including AI-driven tools and physics-based approaches, you'll navigate complex biological and protein landscapes, accelerating protein engineering and vaccine design. You'll have the opportunity to develop a comprehensive pipeline for designing advanced protein antigens, which will be crucial in positioning us at the forefront of scientific vaccine discovery.

Working on multidisciplinary teams, you'll collaborate closely with experimental labs and data tech teams to validate your designs, ensuring they have real-world impact. You'll also play a vital role in enhancing our computational infrastructure and standardizing data processes, contributing to a future-focused and cohesive scientific environment.

This role will be on-site 2-3 days a week, initially at our site in Waltham, MA, before moving to our Cambridge, MA site in 2025.

Please use the cover letter to highlight how you fit the applicant profile and meet the skills and competencies for the role. Your cover letter along with your CV will be used to assess your application.

Why you?

Basic Qualifications:

We are looking for professionals with these required skills to achieve our goals:                                                                                                                                       

• PhD in Computational Science, Computational Science, Bioinformatics, Data Science or a related field
• Experience in Python programming and Python libraries such as NumPy, Pandas, SciPy and scikit-learn.
• Experience with machine learning frameworks, such as PyTorch.
• Experience in computational protein design tools and methodologies.
• Experience training and/or fine-tuning existing protein models. 
• Experience communicating computational results, insights, and conclusions to colleagues in the interdisciplinary project teams. 

Preferred Qualifications:

If you have the following characteristics, it would be a plus:

• Proven experience with the implementation and optimization of different machine learning architectures, such as MLPs, CNNs, and Transformers
• Familiar with other architectures such as diffusion models and graph neural networks.
• Experience with machine learning techniques such as active learning, reinforcement learning, and Bayesian optimization. 
• Experience in managing and building databases to efficiently organize and access large sequence- and structure-based biological datasets.

Please visit  GSK US Benefits Summary to learn more about the comprehensive benefits program GSK offers US employees.

Why GSK?

Uniting science, technology and talent to get ahead of disease together.

GSK is a global biopharma company with a special purpose – to unite science, technology and talent to get ahead of disease together – so we can positively impact the health of billions of people and deliver stronger, more sustainable shareholder returns – as an organisation where people can thrive. We prevent and treat disease with vaccines, specialty and general medicines. We focus on the science of the immune system and the use of new platform and data technologies, investing in four core therapeutic areas (infectious diseases, HIV, respiratory/ immunology and oncology).

Our success absolutely depends on our people. While getting ahead of disease together is about our ambition for patients and shareholders, it’s also about making GSK a place where people can thrive. We want GSK to be a place where people feel inspired, encouraged and challenged to be the best they can be. A place where they can be themselves – feeling welcome, valued, and included. Where they can keep growing and look after their wellbeing. So, if you share our ambition, join us at this exciting moment in our journey to get Ahead Together.

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