Full-Time

Neurodegenerative Disease Senior Scientist

Cultivarium

Cultivarium

51-200 employees

Non-profit incubator launching Focused Research Organizations

Compensation Overview

$86k - $119k/yr

Belmont, MA, USA

In Person

Category
Biology & Biotech (4)
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Requirements
  • PhD in Neuroscience or a related field.
  • Direct, hands-on experience in preparing human brain tissue for downstream analyses.
  • Direct, hands-on experience with single-cell analysis.
  • Excellent communication and interpersonal skills, record keeping ability, and attention to detail.
Responsibilities
  • Design and execute research projects using single-cell proteomics to understand the molecular mechanisms of neurodegeneration in Alzheimer’s and related disease.
  • Computationally analyze large-scale, single-cell proteomic datasets to identify new molecular mechanisms of disease.
  • Collaborate with external laboratories, brain banks, and tissue repositories on sample procurement.
  • Prepare human brain tissue samples for proteomic analysis using methods and technologies developed at PTI.
  • Help junior scientists gain expertise in experimental techniques used at PTI, analyzing and interpreting experimental results, recording data in laboratory notebooks, and writing up and presenting research results.
  • Make regular presentations within PTI and to collaborators.
  • Prepare manuscripts related to project outcomes and grant applications for external funding.
  • Demonstrate a commitment to diversity, inclusion, and cultural awareness through actions, interactions, and communications with others.
  • Other duties as assigned.
Desired Qualifications
  • Experience in high throughput or automated tissue sample collection, preparation, and analysis, particularly with human brains.
  • Experience with mass spectrometry proteomics.
  • Fluency in R or Python, particularly in the context of single-cell analysis.

Convergent Research acts as a non-profit incubator that identifies high-impact scientific or technological fields and launches focused research organizations (FROs) to work on large-scale, coordinated, non-profit projects. It brings together scientific founders and funders to design, launch, and operate these FROs, attracting top talent from academia, industry, and startups. Its products include FROs such as E11 Bio, which develops tools to map brain circuitry, and the Gap Map, a web portal that helps identify gaps in the research landscape. Unlike typical for-profit startups or grant-making programs, Convergent Research fills a structural gap by coordinating philanthropy and research to accelerate progress in critical areas. The company aims to accelerate scientific and technological progress for society by funding, organizing, and operating ambitious, high-impact research programs through its FRO model.

Company Size

51-200

Company Stage

Grant

Total Funding

$2M

Headquarters

Palo Alto, California

Founded

2021

Simplify Jobs

Simplify's Take

What believers are saying

  • Pharma giants like Genentech partner with microbe repositories boosting Cultivarium's open-access model.
  • Extremophile enzymes market hits $2.8B by 2028 for sustainable bioprocessing applications.
  • NSF SBIR Phase II awards in 2025-2026 fund Cultivarium's nonprofit microbial infrastructure.

What critics are saying

  • Convergent Research diverts Schmidt Futures funding to synthetic biology FROs within 12-24 months.
  • Ginkgo Bioworks scales microbe engineering 10x faster capturing Cultivarium's licensing deals in 6-12 months.
  • Arc Institute's open-source foundry obsoletes Cultivarium's model bankrupting it in 24-36 months.

What makes Cultivarium unique

  • Cultivarium develops high-throughput culturing platforms for non-model microbes like archaea and extremophiles.
  • Open-source portal indexes 170,000+ strains with protocols for bacteria, fungi, archaea, and protists.
  • FRO structure releases free tools and data to democratize access to extraordinary microbes.

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Benefits

Health Insurance

Dental Insurance

Vision Insurance

Paid Vacation

Paid Holidays

401(k) Company Match

Wellness Program

Growth & Insights and Company News

Headcount

6 month growth

10%

1 year growth

14%

2 year growth

10%
FinSMEs
May 15th, 2025
Imprint Labs Secures $15M Funding

Imprint Labs, a NYC-based research organization, raised $15M in philanthropic funding from backers including Eric and Wendy Schmidt, Convergent Research, Peter Reinhart, and NYCEDC. The funds will be used to advance their work in decoding immune memory to uncover causes of chronic diseases. Led by CEO Beck Brachman, the company focuses on forensic immunology and was incubated by Cornell Tech.

Business Wire
Mar 11th, 2024
Convergent Research Announces Major New Funding Commitment To Forest Neurotech

LOS ANGELES--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Convergent Research today announced a new $14 million funding commitment from former Google CEO Eric Schmidt to Forest Neurotech, an initiative designed to create next-generation brain-computer-interfaces (BCIs) for individuals with neurological injuries or diseases. In addition to support from Eric Schmidt, Forest Neurotech has received funding from Griffin Catalyst, the philanthropic organization of Citadel CEO Kenneth C. Griffin, the Riley Susan Bechtel Foundation, and James Fickel. Forest Neurotech is developing a novel ultrasound-based BCI that can sense and modulate the whole brain without penetrating it. Most BCIs rely on invasive procedures that access a limited region of the brain while damaging brain tissue and causing harmful biological responses. Forest’s ultrasound technology reaches deep into the brain, providing researchers with a minimally invasive platform to develop diagnostics, monitoring, and therapeutics across the whole brain

Alfred P. Sloan Foundation
Oct 26th, 2023
Grants | Alfred P. Sloan Foundation

Our mission is to make the world a better place through the advancement of scientific knowledge.

Forbes
Feb 15th, 2023
Ben Reinhardt Is On A Mission To Make Sci-Fi A Reality

A Science Fiction future inspired by Ada Palmer’s Terra Ignota Series Jocelynn PearlWhen Ben Reinhardt was an undergrad at Caltech, he often passed a mural painted on the back of a building on campus. It included a quote from Theodore von Kármán, a scientist and engineer who served as the first director of JPL: "Scientists study the world as it is, engineers create the world that never has been." Since his days as an undergrad, Reinhardt’s been trying to build the world as it could be, one filled with the imaginings of science fiction novels like Ada Palmer’s Terra LUNA3 Ignota Series.But a recent paper published in Nature described a decline in scientific progress over the last few decades. It’s a trend that many have been speaking out about for years, among them Reinhardt and a cohort of individuals who study ‘the science of science’, which some have coined metascience.Papers and patents are using narrower portions of existing knowledge. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-05543-x/figures/6Reinhardt went on to get his PhD with a particular desire: to build spaceships. But he found that academia wasn’t quite the right venue for making progress, so he joined a startup working on augmented reality. That wasn’t quite right either