Student Biobank Assistant – Molecular Biodiversity Program

Selection process number: 2090-CMN-26-OC-055
16 weeks, January to April, 2027
37.5 hours per week
1 position

Canada Museum of Nature, 1740 Pink Road, Gatineau

Selection process number: 2090-CMN-26-OC-055

The natural history collections at the Canadian Museum of Nature (CMN) comprise millions of plant and animal specimens emphasizing Canadian wild species. This includes many historical and significant specimens from all provinces and territories. The Museum serves the research and education needs of a broad community by building, preserving, upgrading, and facilitating access to the collection, providing staff with exciting opportunities to play a role in current natural history research and collection management.

The CMN has received funding from the Leacross Foundation to provide one student in STEM who identifies as female an opportunity to obtain high-quality professional experience in natural history collections management and collection-based research. As part of the Museum’s scientific training program, this student will advance specific projects while working alongside colleagues, at all career stages, who are engaged in diverse nature research and who help build, preserve and share natural science collections.

This placement offers great potential to fuel curiosity and to provide insights into biodiversity-related careers. It also presents unique chances to experience a multi-faceted national museum ‘from the inside’, and to interact with its broader community of partners and guests. Under the supervision of experienced CMN staff, the successful candidate will acquire knowledge and skills transferable to many other natural history projects.

The National Biodiversity Cryobank of Canada (NBCC) at the CMN is a repository of genomic resources (e.g., tissue and DNA samples) for biodiversity research. The state-of-the-art facility, with a current capacity of 200,000 samples, provides sample storage environments below
-160 degrees Celsius. The NBCC’s mandate is to collect and curate genomic resources—from across Canada and abroad for biodiversity research.

In the Molecular Biodiversity Laboratory (MBL), CMN staff extract DNA from tissue samples, amplify genes of interest, and sequence these genes via automated capillary electrophoresis. These sequence data are generated to study phylogenetics, to help in species identification, and to contribute morphologically validated DNA barcodes to the Barcode of Life Data System.

The CMN requires a student to undertake tasks in the NBCC and MBL to support various biodiversity projects.

The student in this role will:

• Processing samples for archiving into the NBCC’s cryogenic freezers. This may include the following tasks:
  • Subsampling various tissues into labelled cryovials.
  • Re-labelling donated vials with barcoded vial labels.
  • Rehousing plant tissue samples into barcoded envelopes.
  • Rehousing donated DNA samples into barcoded vials.
• Performing specimen data management duties including transcribing collection data into digital spreadsheets and preparing digital datasets for upload into KE Emu, the CMN’s digital database system.
• Helping with routine tasks in the NBCC including vial labelling, freezer monitoring, and tidying.
• Performing tasks in the MBL to generate DNA sequence data to support various projects, possibly including those with a focus on lichen, beetle, vascular plant, bird, and seaweed biodiversity. Tasks may include:
  • Extracting DNA from tissue samples.
  • Amplifying target genes via polymerase chain reaction (PCR), and DNA sequencing reactions.
  • Helping with routine MBL tasks including preparing reagent aliquots, filling pipette tip boxes, and tidying.

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