Scientist – Neuron Whisperer

Merge Labs•San Francisco, CA

17h

About The Position

Merge Labs is a frontier research lab with the mission of bridging biological and artificial intelligence to maximize human ability, agency and experience. We’re pursuing this goal by developing fundamentally new approaches to brain-computer interfaces that interact with the brain at high bandwidth, integrate with advanced AI, and are ultimately safe and accessible for anyone to use. About the team Merge is tackling some of the most audacious problems in molecular engineering, synthetic biology and neuroscience. Our Research Platform Team builds the experimental capabilities needed to solve these problems with very high speed and rigor. The instruments and pipelines the team builds accelerate molecular assembly, protein expression, mammalian cell culture, advanced microscopy, sequencing, as well as some very unusual custom methods. The team collaborates with program teams to establish and streamline these capabilities, automate wherever it makes sense to do so, and integrate with our data science and machine learning pipelines. We come up with creative approaches to greatly increase throughput and continuously innovate. About the role Do you love neurons? So do we. Neurons are at the heart of Merge Labs. They are the primary testing ground and ultimate application domain for our molecular biosensors and actuators. To effectively develop our genetic constructs and physical approaches, we need to be great at culturing and using neurons in our experimental pipelines. As our Neuron Whisperer, you will be responsible for establishing and executing methods to provide high-quality neurons for screening and validation workflows. You will optimize harvesting, differentiation, transaction/transduction and maintenance. You will be an active participant in our science, providing input into research design and working with program teams to identify neuron needs and workflows (some of which will be unusual!) and helping make them happen. You will collaborate with automation engineers, data scientists and other platform scientists to make things better, faster and more reproducible to enable rapid scientific progress.

Requirements

Deeply love neurons (and the cells that support them).
Have a extensive experience culturing, differentiating and transfecting/transducing neurons (primary, iPSC and ideally 3D) and assaying their quality.
Have demonstrated the ability to optimize protocols and improve quality and efficiency.
Are excited about providing critical input reagents to support research.
Are excited about serving as a subject matter expert collaborating with research teams on research strategy, experiment design and analysis.
Love doing hands-on work in the lab.
Enjoy learning new science, doing things that are unusual and developing new capabilities.
Have worked in a fast-paced biotech/techbio, ideally startup, environment and loved it.
Have strong communication skills and enjoy collaborating with researchers to help them accelerate their projects.

Nice To Haves

Experience with high throughput screening and automation.
Experience with organotypic slices.

Responsibilities

Take responsibility for neuronal culture at Merge Labs.
Define and prioritize neural culture needs across research programs.
Establish and execute the culture of primary rodent neurons.
Establish and execute the differentiation and culture of iPSC-derived human neurons.
Produce and maintain 3D neuronal cultures such as in hydrogel scaffolds, spheroids and/or organoids.
Optimize methods for transfection and transduction of neurons in the above formats.
Establish and execute assays to characterize and ensure consistent neuronal health and quality.
Optimize protocols for (sometimes unusual) culture requirements needed to enable specific experiments, including high-throughput screens.
Work with automation engineers to reduce hands-on time and further improve consistency for the above methods.
Provide input into research strategy, experiment design and analysis as the in-house neuron expert.
Scope and acquire instruments and reagents as needed to support the above workflows.
Collaborate with data science/ML engineers to integrate protocols, measurements, requests and handoffs with laboratory information systems.
Conceive, design and validate ideas for how to increase throughput and quality.
Extend capabilities into organotypic slice culture.
Recruit and manage research associates as needed to meet research program demand.