Assistant Staff Scientist - Neuro-Oncology

Department Overview

The Staff Scientist serves as the senior scientific and operational lead for the day-to-day activities of a multidisciplinary preclinical cancer research laboratory focused on central nervous system tumors, tumor biology, the tumor microenvironment, therapeutic resistance, and development of novel treatment strategies.

Working under the overall scientific direction and formal supervision of the Principal Investigator (PI), the Staff Scientist translates scientific priorities into rigorous, reproducible experimental plans; remains substantially hands-on at the bench and in animal studies; and provides day-to-day scientific direction, troubleshooting, training, and technical oversight to laboratory personnel.

The position has primary responsibility for effective wet-laboratory operations, including preclinical model and method development, animal-study coordination, standard operating procedures, quality control, inventory and equipment oversight, biosafety and animal-research compliance coordination, core-facility coordination, data organization and reproducibility, and scientific contributions to grants, manuscripts, presentations, and trainee development.

1. Scientific Research and Experimental Leadership

• Design, execute, analyze, troubleshoot, and interpret rigorous preclinical studies of cancer biology, tumor heterogeneity, tumor-host interactions, therapeutic response and resistance, and the tumor microenvironment.
• Translate priorities established with the PI into experimental plans, milestones, study timelines, and practical next steps; independently develop, optimize, validate, and implement new models, assays, and workflows.
• Apply appropriate controls, quantitative methods, statistics, and sample-size considerations; integrate results across platforms and prepare publication-quality figures and analyses.
• Remain actively engaged in hands-on research while ensuring scientific rigor, complete documentation, data quality, reproducibility, and research integrity across projects.

2. Wet-Laboratory Operations, Quality, and Compliance

• Serve as the day-to-day scientific and operational lead of the wet laboratory; coordinate project workflows and animal-study schedules, including implantation, treatment, imaging, tissue collection, necropsy, and downstream analyses.
• Develop, maintain, review, and standardize SOPs, protocols, electronic laboratory records, raw-data repositories, and quality-control practices.
• Maintain centralized inventories and minimum-stock thresholds for reagents, antibodies, cell lines, animal models, and supplies; oversee frozen stocks/biobanks, cell-line authentication, mycoplasma testing, passage records, and model quality.
• Coordinate equipment maintenance, calibration, service and repairs; work with vendors and institutional cores; track supply, animal, imaging, and core-service expenditures for PI and administrative review.
• Coordinate IACUC/DCM activities, animal records, required training and protocol documentation with the PI; oversee lab-level BSL-2 and applicable viral-vector practices, training, records, and safety compliance.

3. Preclinical Models and Technical Research

• Generate, optimize, and maintain applicable orthotopic, xenograft, syngeneic, and other in vivo tumor models; perform rodent handling, anesthesia, perioperative care, dosing, injections, vascular access, longitudinal monitoring, and survival surgery, including tumor implantation.
• Plan and perform small-animal optical imaging using IVIS or comparable platforms; conduct necropsy, tissue harvesting, fixation, freezing, preservation, and preparation for downstream analyses.
• Independently perform, troubleshoot, supervise, and teach mammalian cell culture and cryopreservation; histology; immunohistochemistry; immunofluorescence; microscopy and quantitative image analysis; flow cytometry/cell sorting;
  Western blotting; ELISA; and RNA/DNA extraction and sample preparation.
• Train and assess qualified personnel before delegating routine or complex procedures, and coordinate specialized work with institutional histology, flow cytometry, genomics, imaging, and animal-resource cores.

4. Grants, Publications, Data Analysis, and Scientific Communication

• Contribute substantially to extramural grant applications and progress reports by developing experimental approaches, methods, preliminary-data strategies, figures, research content, and responses to scientific review.
• Lead and co-author manuscripts; draft and…