UT-ORII Fellow: Synthetic Biology

Requisition Id 13971 

 

Overview:

The Biosciences Division (BSD) at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) is focused on advancing science and technology to better understand complex biological systems and their relationship with the environment. BSD has the expertise and special facilities in genomics, computational biology, microbiology, microbial ecology, biophysics, structural biology, and plant sciences. Research experiments include large-scale laboratory, greenhouse, and field experimental data acquisition, management, organization, and analysis to derive insight and hypotheses suitable for further experimental validation and to improve researchers’ ability to further advance understanding of biological systems.

 

The Synthetic Biology group, working with the UT-ORII Circular Bioeconomy initiative, is focused on developing and applying genetic tools and techniques to address barriers to engineering organisms central to success. Synthetic Biology aims to re-engineer living organisms to create new and beneficial bioproducts, including sustainable biofuels, bioplastics, and other biochemicals and materials while improving sustainability at economies of scale. A fundamental barrier that remains include our ability to understand and engineer capabilities such as high stress tolerance, broad substrate utilization, and complex product formation pathways with improved yield and lower costs. This barrier represent substantial time, cost, and risk to commercialization of novel biodesign strategies – resulting in limited organisms, both model and non-model, and products successfully moving into industrial production over the last decade. We aim to develop a strong and multidisciplinary team to uncover underlying design principles for engineering these traits across a variety of organisms.

 

This position will be associated with the UT-Oak Ridge Innovation Institute’s Circular Bioeconomy Systems (CBS) Convergent Research Initiative (CRI), whose mission is to develop transformative strategies for managing, valorizing, and extending the lifespan of each carbon atom. They aim to use emerging science to produce materials from sustainable carbon sources, pioneering the shift toward low-energy and low-carbon-intensity agriculture, and manufacturing. At full strength, the CBS CRI will include ~20 member investigators from Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), the University of Tennessee Institute of Agriculture (UTIA), and the University of Tennessee, Knoxville (UTK). The CBS CRI supports its interdisciplinary researchers by offering networking opportunities with fellow scientists and bioeconomy stakeholders, facilitating collaborative experiments and proposal development, providing mentorship from senior CRI researchers, and offering tailored professional development opportunities.

 

Major Duties/Responsibilities:

• Perform research in bacterial engineering and/or development of synthetic biology tools 
• Develop and deploy a fluxomics platform for diverse organisms
• Work with a diverse team of scientists
• Interface directly with internal and external partners in various disciplines
• Present research results at national scientific meetings
• Publish scientific results in peer-reviewed journals in a timely manner
• Participate in project planning and execution
• Work with staff to develop new proposals
• Maintain detailed and accurate records
• Acquire and analyze data in keeping with project scheduling
• Take a position of leadership for day-to-day laboratory operations while addressing all of ORNL's environmental health and safety requirements
• Self-assess experimental research skill set and identify weakness and secure learning resources to address these issues
• Ensure compliance with environmental, safety, health and quality program requirements
• Deliver ORNL’s mission by aligning behaviors, priorities, and interactions wit