Postdoctoral Associate

Postdoctoral Associate

The Duke Anesthesiology Microbiome Profiling (AMP) Laboratory under Dr. Mara Serbanescu in the Department of Anesthesiology at Duke University School of Medicine is seeking a full-time Postdoctoral Associate to support clinical and translational research focused on the role of the microbiome and host immune responses in critical illness.

The successful postdoctoral candidate will play a central role in the ongoing Microbiome and Immune Correlates of Outcomes in the Intensive Care Unit (MICRO-ICU) study, a prospective longitudinal study enrolling a heterogeneous cohort of critically ill patients (sepsis and non-septic critically ill patients including perioperative liver transplantation candidates) and healthy controls, funded by a NIH NIGMS ESI-MIRA.

This position is ideal for a highly organized, motivated individual who is interested in gaining experience in clinical and translational research. The majority of the role involves hands-on clinical research operations: screening and obtaining informed consent; collecting and processing biospecimens; and assisting with clinical data entry.

Key Responsibilities

• Screening ICU patients for study eligibility using the EPIC electronic medical record and communication with clinical teams.
• Approaching patients and/or legally authorized representatives for study consent.
• Coordinating and performing longitudinal biospecimen collection, including blood, rectal swabs, oral swabs, urine, stool when available, and other protocol-specified samples.
• Performing light sample processing, labeling, documentation, storage, and handoff of human biospecimens for downstream microbiome, immune, biomarker, and metabolomic assays.
• Maintaining accurate study documentation, including REDCap/clinical databases, and assisting with clinical data abstraction from the EPIC electronic medical record.
• Supporting protocol updates, SOP development, and other research operations as needed.
• Participating in laboratory meetings and study team meetings.
• Contributing to data summaries, basic statistical analyses, abstracts, presentations at local/national conferences, manuscripts, and grant-related materials, depending on experience and interest.

Required Qualifications

• PhD, MD, DO, PharmD, DVM, or equivalent doctoral degree in a relevant field, including but not limited to medicine, public health/epidemiology, biomedical sciences, nursing, pharmacy, microbiology, immunology or a related discipline.
• Strong interest in clinical or translational research.
• Willingness to participate directly in patient-facing research activities, including screening, consent, and biospecimen collection from critically ill patients in accordance with institutional biosafety, infection prevention, and human subjects research policies.
• Strong interpersonal skills and comfort initiating conversations with patients and families in high-acuity, emotionally charged clinical settings.
• Excellent organizational skills and attention to detail.
• Comfort working in a hospital, operating room, and ICU environment.
• Ability to work independently while also collaborating effectively with a multidisciplinary team.
• Ability to manage multiple study tasks, time-sensitive sample collections, and detailed documentation.

Preferred Qualifications

• Prior experience with human subjects research, clinical research coordination, or patient-facing research.
• Experience with electronic medical records, clinical data abstraction, biospecimen collection and/or tracking.
• Prior experience with infectious disease, microbiome, immunology, or transplant research.
• Interest in contributing to analysis or scientific writing, including abstracts, manuscripts, and grant applications.
• Familiarity with statistical analysis in R, Graph Pad Prism, or similar platforms.

Research Environment

The Duke AMP (Serbanescu) Laboratory is a translational research group within Duke Anesthesiology focused on microbiome–immune interactions in critically ill and perioperative patients. Our research combines prospective ICU cohort studies; advanced microbiome sequencing techniques to study communities in the gut, blood and other bodysites; immune profiling; biomarker assays; metabolomics; clinical outcomes research; and systems-based biology and computational multi-omics approaches.

The postdoctoral associate will meet weekly with the Principal Investigator (PI) to discuss study progress, troubleshoot challenges, and identify opportunities for scholarly development. Mentorship is a priority in our lab and we are committed to supporting each trainee's growth—whether their career path leads to academic research, clinical research operations, physician-scientist training, or related fields.

Position Structure

This is a full-time position; the contract is annual with the option to renew. Because MICRO-ICU is an active prospective clinical study, the position requires substantial in-person availability at Duke University Hospital for patient screening, enrollment, consent, and biospecimen…