Scientist, Enzymology - Plant Biology Institute Plant Biology Institute England, United Kingdom

Join us at EIT:

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. Explore more .org.

The Plant Biology Institute, headed by Professor Steve Kelly, is a key part of the Ellison Institute of Technology (EIT) Oxford. The institute aims to develop impactful and commercially sustainable solutions for improving global food production and planetary health through pioneering plant science research.

The Plant Biology Institute will unite world-class researchers who are focused on expanding the frontiers of plant science. Our research is focused on enhancing our ability to feed the planet while simultaneously improving the climate and ecosystem outcomes of food production. By embedding cutting-edge plant science research within an organisation that is focused on solving global challenges at scale, we aim to accelerate the timeline from discovery to global impact.

Areas of exploration include:

• Improved plant productivity, both indoors and outside.
• Reduced reliance on inputs including water, fertilisers, pesticides, and herbicides.
• Novel decarbonised plant-based production platforms for food and medicines.
• Advanced technologies that speed up discovery and deployment in plants.

Researchers will have access to state-of-the‑art laboratory and plant growth facilities and have opportunities to collaborate with experts at the forefront of research on AI, automation, and generative biology across the EIT ecosystem. They will also work with global leaders in market development, commercialisation, and impact creation. The Plant Biology Institute has long‑term substantial funding to support the unique scale and ambition of its vision.

The Ellison Institute of Technology (EIT) is seeking a highly motivated and skilled Scientist in Enzymology to join the ‘Yield and Photosynthesis’ programme. This initiative aims to increase sustainable agricultural output from existing farmland by developing crop varieties with higher yield and greater resilience to a changing climate. The successful candidate will play a central role in developing and optimising high‑throughput enzyme assays to characterise plant protein variants identified through evolutionary‑guided discovery, AI‑assisted protein design, and other trait discovery approaches.

Working closely with computational scientists and the EIT AI and Robotics Institute, they will establish robust, scalable workflows for protein expression, purification and biochemical characterisation, while helping to develop automated laboratory pipelines that accelerate the identification and optimisation of improved proteins for crop enhancement. The ultimate goal of this research is to deliver transformative improvements in agricultural productivity and resilience, enabling farmers to achieve greater yields from existing agricultural land while reducing the environmental footprint of food production.

The main responsibilities of the successful candidate will be to design,…