Advisor - Biologist - Pandemic Preparedness

At Lilly, the work is demanding because patients are waiting. We unite caring with discovery to help make life better for people around the world, knowing that every decision, every detail, and every day matters. Headquartered in Indianapolis, Indiana, our over 50,000 employees around the globe take on complex challenges to discover and deliver life-changing medicines, strengthen how health is understood and managed, and support the communities we serve.

This is hard, urgent, selfless work—but it’s work worth doing. If you’re driven by purpose and ready to bring your best to work that truly matters for patients, we invite you to join us.

At Lilly, the work is demanding because patients are waiting. We unite caring with discovery to help make life better for people around the world, knowing that every decision, every detail, and every day matters. Headquartered in Indianapolis, Indiana, our over 50,000 employees around the globe take on complex challenges to discover and deliver life-changing medicines, strengthen how health is understood and managed, and support the communities we serve.

This is hard, urgent, selfless work—but it’s work worth doing. If you’re driven by purpose and ready to bring your best to work that truly matters for patients, we invite you to join us.

Lilly’s Biotechnology Discovery Research (BioTDR) organization has a track record for delivering novel biotherapeutic medicines to advance into clinical research in key areas of unmet medical need across a variety of therapeutic areas. We are seeking a highly skilled and motivated Molecular and Cellular Biologist to join our research team. This role is part of a dedicated pandemic preparedness team within BioTDR, working in close partnership with Lilly's Infectious Disease organization and external partners to create and develop capabilities to enable future pandemic preparedness.

The successful candidate will build and own the functional assay infrastructure that enables rapid antibody screening and characterization — including pseudovirus neutralization platforms and cell-based entry assays, with initial focus on Filoviruses such Ebola. The position is located at the Lilly Bio Technology Center in San Diego, CA.

• Designing and establishing pseudovirus neutralization assays that are appropriately reflective of viral entry mechanisms of targeted pathogens, including the development of high-throughput, quantitative approaches for antiviral screening.
• Antiviral antibody characterization including Fc-effector function screening, cell-to-cell spread assays (where appropriate), and antibody escape mapping.
• Collaborating with external collaborators and CROs to design high containment in vitro and in vivo studies.
• Embrace and celebrate diversity by using a relevant and unique background and set of experiences to provide new ideas to deliver innovative solutions drugging novel targets.

• Ph.D. in Virology, molecular biology, cellular biology, or related field, plus a minimum of 2 years post-graduate experience (post-doctoral or industry), in virology and antiviral discovery.
• Experience in performing and optimizing live-viral and pseudo typed virus neutralization assays (in BSL2 or higher containment settings), including constructing, expanding, and titrating virus stocks.

• Strong core proficiency in all aspects of molecular and cellular biology, including molecular cloning, recombinant protein expression and recombinant cell line generation.
• Working knowledge of filovirus biology, especially Ebola GP-mediated entry - enabling rapid contribution to the initial Ebola focus of the pandemic preparedness program.
• Familiarity with cell biological approaches…