Post-Doctoral Fellow - Microbiology and Immunology

At VCU, we take pride in our deep commitment to our postdoctoral community. In 2026, the National Postdoctoral Association (NPA) named VCU as one of only 12 recipients of its inaugural Institutional Policy Awards, in recognition of our transformative efforts to elevate quality of life and workplace equity for postdocs. VCU postdocs are Virginia state employees, with benefits mirroring 12-month faculty.

We adhere closely to the NPA's guidelines for best practices in postdoc training. We work closely with our local NPA chapter, the VCU Postdoc Association, to make this a welcoming and productive place to complete your training! 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.

School Of Medicine MBU

Microbiology and Immunology

Located on the MCV Campus in downtown Richmond, the Department of Microbiology and Immunology is home to a vibrant community of researchers, educators and learners. With a strong history of research funding, our department strives to advance scientific knowledge in the biomedical sciences and inform medical advancements that improve patient outcomes. Our innovative studies span a broad spectrum of areas within the fields of microbiology and immunology:

• Allergy and autoimmunity
• Host-pathogen interactions and molecular pathogenesis
• Human microbiome science and microbial genomics
• Reproductive immunology
• T-cell therapy and vaccine development
• Tumor biology, cell signaling and epigenetics

As educators, we are proud to provide a collaborative, collegial learning environment for our students. Faculty and postdoctoral fellows serve as dedicated mentors, providing an individualized educational experience and shaping the next generation of successful scientists.

The successful candidate will join a laboratory studying the microbiome and microenvironment of the female reproductive tract, with a principal role on a study of the vaginal microbiome and the host transcriptional response to it in pregnancy. That study draws on the Multi-Omic Microbiome Study:
Pregnancy Initiative (MOMS-PI), a cohort of more than 1,500 pregnancies with banked specimens and comprehensively abstracted clinical outcomes, and asks whether distinct host transcriptional states of the vaginal mucosa - rather than microbial community composition alone - determine risk of preterm birth and other adverse pregnancy outcomes. The Fellow will also contribute to other ongoing projects in the laboratory, including sequencing and characterizing pathogenic viruses and related pathogens (part of the Pathogen Genomic Center of Excellence).

This is a bench-focused position: the emphasis is on generating high-quality sequencing and assay data across a range of modalities, working alongside an established bioinformatics and biostatistics team who lead the computational analyses.

Extract, purify and quality-control DNA and RNA from vaginal swabs, cytobrush specimens, tissue and clinical specimens. Perform digital PCR, quantitative PCR, and multiplex cytokine immunoassay. Construct plasmids and recombinant DNA constructs as projects require.

Prepare total RNA libraries with dual rRNA depletion, coordinate sequencing runs with the VCU Genomics Core, and perform quality assessment of resulting libraries and data.

Prepare and fix cervicovaginal cytobrush specimens for probe-based single-cell profiling on the 10x Chromium X platform, including sample dissociation, fixation, probe hybridization, and library construction. Prepare samples for flow cytometric immunophenotyping with the Flow Cytometry Shared Resource.

Prepare fresh-frozen and FFPE tissue sections for spatial profiling, and generate libraries using the Cyt Assist and Visium HD platforms in coordination with the Genomics Core and TDAAC.

Generate shotgun metagenomic libraries from vaginal specimens and, where projects require, sequence bacterial isolates and assemble their genomes.

Apply and optimize enrichment strategies…