Postdoctoral Research Associate, Vaccine Development

The Department of Pediatrics, Division of Infectious Disease at the University of Virginia is seeking candidates for a postdoctoral position in vaccine development.  

The UVA Department of Pediatrics and the UVA Children’s Hospital share a common goal to enhance the health and well-being of children and families through collaborative medical care, education of professionals dedicated to pediatric healthcare, breakthrough research that improves lives, leadership, and community service. For more information on the Department of Pediatrics, visit our website: https://med.virginia.edu/pediatrics/.

The postdoctoral fellow will work on developing new technologies aimed at rapidly producing new, inexpensive, globally appropriate recombinant vaccines for important pathogens, including HIV and coronaviruses. The postdoctoral fellow will be involved in the production and study of new vaccines employing a novel vaccine production platform that we are developing, as implemented in: Killed whole-genome reduced-bacteria surface-expressed coronavirus fusion peptide vaccines protect against disease in a porcine model. 

The work holds the promise of making a rapid, significant impact on health globally. The work will involve classical molecular biology and virology, bacteriology, synthetic biology, recombinant expression systems, and a variety of immunological techniques and animal systems. The postdoctoral fellow will also help to work on optimizing candidate vaccine immunogens using principles of microbial ecology and the microbiome.

Denicar Lina Nascimento Fabris Maeda, Debin Tian, Hanna Yu, Nakul Dar, Vignesh Rajasekaran, Sarah Meng, Hassan M. Mahsoub, Harini Sooryanarain, Bo Wang, C. Lynn Heffron, Anna Hassebroek, Tanya LeRoith, Xiang-Jin Meng, Steven L. Zeichner Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences May 2021, 118 (18) e2025622118; DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2025622118.

https://www.pnas.org/content/118/18/e2025622118/tab-figures-data

This is a restricted position; continuation is dependent on funding and satisfactory performance.

Postdoctoral employment is temporary and is normally limited to an individual who has been awarded a Ph.D. or equivalent doctorate within the previous five years and who will be involved in full-time research or scholarship at the University.

Employment as a Postdoctoral Research Associate is viewed as training and is preparatory for a full-time academic or research career, is supervised by a senior scholar, and allows the appointee to publish the results of his/her research or scholarship during the training period.

For additional information regarding this position, please contact Steve Zeichner, MD at slz7b@virginia.edu.

Minimum Requirements:

Doctoral degree

Physical Demands:

This is primarily a sedentary job involving extensive use of desktop computers. The job does occasionally require traveling some distance to attend meetings, and programs.

This is exempt, benefited position. For more information on the benefits available to postdoctoral associates at UVA, visit postdoc.virginia.edu and hr.virginia.edu/benefits. 
 

The University will perform background checks on all new hires prior to employment. A completed pre-employment health screen is required for this position prior to employment.

This position is located in Charlottesville, VA. 
 

To Apply:

Please apply through UVA Career Page and search for R0055242. Internal applicants must apply through their UVA Workday profile by searching 'Find Jobs'.   

Complete an application online with the following documents:

• CV
• Cover letter

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