Career Center

Department Overview

This position is under the general supervision of Dr. Alejandro Aballay, chair of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology and the direct supervision of Dr. William Messer working in the laboratory with dengue virus.

Function/Duties of Position

The Research Assistant 2 will be working in a BSL-2 and BSL2+ lab, maintaining tissue culture reagents and cell lines, including mammalian and insect cells lines, propagate, harvest, purify, titrate, store and maintain inventories of virus grown in tissue culture and in isolated virus from human and animal samples. Experimental work will consist primarily of ELISA and neutralization assays to characterize human and animal immune sera reactivity with SARS-CoV-2, dengue, yellow fever, Japanese encephalitis, Zika, chikungunya and West Nile viruses. Responsibilities include:

• Maintain cell lines, perform PCR, sequencing, ELISA and neutralization assays, molecular & immunological research techniques, documenting data
• Trouble-shoot/problem solve experiment issues, contribute to publications, participate in laboratory meetings/journal clubs, etc.
• General laboratory housekeeping & maintenance responsibilities (stocking, ordering, prepping materials, etc.)Process, store and track patient samples (serum, PBMCs, urine, oral samples)
• Afterhours pickup and dropoff of patient sample collection materials in OHSU hospitals
• The Research Assistant 2 will be expected to contribute intellectually and develop the projects he/she works on and will be given full credit as an author on all publications to which his/her work contributes

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in relevant field; OR Associate's degree AND 3 years of relevant experience; OR 4 years of relevant experience; OR an equivalent combination of training and experience
• Routine Excel, database entry, and data management
• Ability to use both convention and creative means to construct bacterial plasmids containing viral DNA, isolate and purify those plasmids, and use the recovered DNA to construct and recover infectious recombinant viruses

Preferred Qualifications

• Bachelors Degree
• BSL2 experience with pathogenic viruses amd prior tissue cultuer experience
• Experience conducting PCR, sequencing, ELISA
• Neutralization assays, statistical analysis
• Human subjects research training

Additional Details

Apply here online. Please be sure to upload a cover letter and CV/resume.

All are welcome