Experience level: Bachelor’s degree and 1+ year lab experience.
Skillset: Experienced in cell culture and sterile technique, highly organized researcher with a track record of maintaining a clean, organized, and safe lab space. Familiarity with mouse or tissue dissections is a big plus.
The position
We are searching for a Research Associate to join our organoid research team to help with culture maintenance, media changes, and organoid handling. You will also support general cell culture by preparing and organizing media for the whole team and help maintain key equipment, including BSCs, incubators, sterile tools and vacuum traps. You will also help with record keeping and make regular notes for all cell culture tasks.
Our mission
Conception is a startup with the mission of generating viable human eggs from induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs). Successful development of our research could have many benefits, such as removing age limits on motherhood, allowing for easy screening of eggs with harmful genetic mutations, and allowing same-sex couples to reproduce. This has been done in mice, and now we are working to translate it to humans.
Our research
To accomplish our goal, we must derive human germ and ovarian somatic cells from iPSCs. These germ cells should resemble both the transcriptional and epigenetic profile of in vivo germ cells that are able to enter meiosis and develop to viable human eggs and somatic cells should support these germs cells in development and maturation. We create ovarian organoids from stem cell derived cell types to help the eggs develop properly.
What we are looking for
Mission alignment as well as a solid scientific background with a reliable track-record in executing experiments is something we strongly care about. We are looking for teammates with great communication skills that are very organized and thrive in a highly collaborative, dynamic, flexible and fast paced teams.
While expertise is valued, we can provide training in areas of inexperience if you are passionate about our goal. There is no requirement for prior experience working on reproductive cells or iPSCs -- we love it when people come to work with us from different backgrounds and bring new ideas and techniques to our lab.
Come and work with us
We are well funded and well connected in Silicon Valley. We offer competitive pay, company equity, and excellent healthcare benefits for these positions.
To learn more about the original mouse proof of concept to live birth that inspired us, see https://www.nature.com/articles/nature20104
To learn more about us, our mission, and approach you can read two features published by The New Yorker and the MIT Technology review.
