Post-Doctoral - Department of Pathology

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Summary:

Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) School of Medicine is a premier academic medical center located in the heart of Richmond. Accounting for almost half of VCU’s sponsored research, the School of Medicine is internationally recognized for patient care and education. Virginia Commonwealth University is an equal opportunity employer.

Unit:School Of Medicine MBU

Department: Pathology

Department Summary: The mission of the Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) Department of Pathology is to provide high-quality, cost-effective pathology services that support the patient care, education, and research missions of the VCU Health System and School of Medicine.

The PI is seeking a highly motivated Post-Doctoral Fellow with expertise in synthetic chemistry and/or chemical biology. The laboratory investigates how small molecules can be used both as therapeutics and as chemical tools to understand and manipulate disease-relevant biology. Current research spans the discovery and development of novel therapeutics for substance use disorders and overdose, the discovery of safer opioid and non-opioid pain therapeutics, and the exploration of targeted protein degradation and other mechanism-driven therapeutic strategies in cancer.

Across these areas, the laboratory integrates molecular design and computational approaches with chemical synthesis, chemical biology, cellular studies, and pharmacology to translate mechanistic insights into new therapeutic strategies.

The successful candidate will contribute to the design, synthesis, characterization, and biological evaluation of small molecules across multidisciplinary research programs. The Post-Doctoral Fellow will work closely with researchers in chemical biology, pharmacology, cellular biology, and computational chemistry to investigate molecular mechanisms and advance promising compounds.

This position is well suited for an independent, organized, and highly motivated scientist with strong synthetic problem-solving skills and an interest in applying chemistry to biologically and therapeutically relevant questions. The fellow will also have opportunities to contribute to scientific manuscripts, presentations, grant applications, and the mentoring of junior researchers.

• Design novel small molecules and develop efficient synthetic strategies and routes for their preparation.
• Synthesize, purify, and characterize target compounds and troubleshoot challenging synthetic transformations.
• Characterize compounds using techniques including NMR, LC/MS or HRMS, HPLC, IR, and related analytical methods.
• Analyze chemical structure–activity relationships and experimental data to guide subsequent compound design and optimization.
• Collaborate with researchers in chemical biology, pharmacology, cellular biology, and computational chemistry to prioritize experiments and interpret multidisciplinary datasets.
• Contribute to the planning, execution, and interpretation of biochemical, cellular, and pharmacological studies, as appropriate to the candidate’s experience and project needs.
• Maintain accurate and detailed laboratory notebooks, experimental records, and compound characterization data.
• Present research findings at laboratory meetings and scientific conferences and contribute to the preparation of manuscripts and grant applications.
• Assist with mentoring and training undergraduate and graduate students and other junior laboratory members.
• Contribute to maintaining a safe, organized, collaborative, and professional laboratory environment.

• Ph.D. in Synthetic Organic Chemistry, Chemical Biology, Chemistry, or a closely related field by the position start date.
• Demonstrated expertise in organic…