Research Assistant; Zuercher Lab - Generative Biology Insititute

Description

At the Ellison Institute of Technology (EIT), we're on a mission to translate scientific discovery into real world impact. We bring together visionary scientists, technologists, engineers, researchers, educators and innovators to tackle humanity's greatest challenges in four transformative areas.

• Health, Medical Science & Generative Biology
• Food Security & Sustainable Agriculture
• Climate Change & Managing CO₂
• Artificial Intelligence & Robotics

This is ambitious work - work that demands curiosity, courage, and a relentless drive to make a difference. At EIT, you'll join a community built on excellence, innovation, tenacity, trust, and collaboration, where bold ideas become real‑world breakthroughs. Together, we push boundaries, embrace complexity, and create solutions to scale ideas from lab to society.

Led by Founding Director Jason Chin, the Generative Biology Institute (GBI) at the Ellison Institute of Technology is tackling the key challenges in making biology engineerable and thereby unlocking the unrivalled power of biology for the benefit of humanity.

The vision of the GBI is to lay the foundations for engineering biology and unlock its potential for good. To achieve this, we must overcome two key challenges. First, we need the ability to write in the natural language of biology, enabling the rapid and scalable synthesis of entire genomes with precision. Second, we must understand what to write – determining which DNA sequences will generate biological systems that perform the desired functions.

Addressing these challenges will allow us to harness the full power of biology to create transformative solutions across health, agriculture, clean energy and more.

The Generative Biology Institute commenced operations in 2025, occupying newly renovated bespoke space in the Oxford Science Park. The team will later move to a purpose‑made facility under construction, which will include more than 40,000 m² of research laboratory and office space. It will house over 30 groups and support up to 600 employees at scale, focused on solving the two critical challenges in making biology engineerable and applying the solutions to addressing the global challenges encapsulated in EIT's Humane Endeavours.

We are seeking ambitious, creative, and highly skilled Postdoctoral Researchers to join the Zuercher Lab  lab, led by Principal Investigator Jerome Zuercher, focuses on two interconnected areas, with many projects involving aspects of both topics (Genome synthesis and Genetic Isolation).

A direct consequence of the universality of the genetic code is the possibility for genetic information to be transferred between evolutionarily distant species. Such horizontal transfer of genetic information (as opposed to vertical genetic transfer, where information is passed on from an organism to its progeny) is common in nature and has shaped evolution over billions of years. In the context of genetic engineering, however, this type of genetic spillover is highly concerning.

Prevention of interference of artificial genetic information with natural biology is critical to allow biotechnological progress to be both safe and ambitious.

Furthermore, biotechnology will play a central role in addressing pressing challenges in food security, pharmaceutical development, sustainable fuel source, and efficient carbon fixation. Thus, essential parts of the economy will increasingly rely on bioproduction facilities harbouring tailor‑made microbes. It is therefore critical that such facilities are extremely reliable. However, due to the universality of the genetic code, engineered organisms are just as susceptible to viral invasion as natural organisms.

A single viral particle that finds its way into a bioproduction facility can force its operational shutdown.

Altering the genetic code of a cell provides an opportunity to render natural and synthetic genetic information incompatible. This breakthrough offers a means to protect the environment from genetically engineered organisms and, vice versa, engineered organisms critical for bioproduction from viral invasion.…