PhD Student Position (Enzymology and enzyme engineering) 80 %

The University of Zurich, Switzerland's largest university, offers a range of attractive positions in various subject areas and professional fields. With around 10,000 employees and currently 12 professional apprenticeship streams the University offers an inspiring working environment on cutting-edge research and top-class education. Put your talent and skills to work with us. Find out more about UZH as an employer! ###

Your responsibilities

The successful candidate will take on responsibilities that approximately follow the trajectory below.

• Cloning, expression, purification, and activity characterization for our target enzyme,
• Chemical synthesis of substrates and assay probes,
• Assay development for screening enzymatic activity,
• Creation and high-throughput screening of DNA libraries,
• NGS and computational analysis of variants,
• Scripting in python for data analysis,
• Characterization of key enzyme variants, and
• Combining mechanistic enzymology and computation to understand the effects of mutations on catalysis.

Although no candidate will be expected to have experience in all the fields above prior to joining, the project is interdisciplinary. Thus, an enthusiasm and capacity to become proficient in all of these techniques is essential.

Additionally, the student will be responsible for academic and organizational duties, including

• serving as a teaching assistant for introductory chemistry courses,
• participating in group meetings and departmental seminars,
• fulfilling group responsibilities (equipment and organizational responsibilities), and
• completing PhD requirements for the chemistry graduate school program.

Your profile

Essential:

• A highly motivated student with an MS degree in chemistry, biochemistry, or related field
• Ability to logically design rigorous experiments, including control experiments
• Scientific integrity
• Proactive about planning
• Capable of integrating feedback efficiently
• Capable of working in a highly interdisciplinary project
• Experience with cloning, protein expression, and protein purification
• Experience with chemical synthesis
• Willingness and ability to learn Python scripting
• Enthusiastic about learning and applying new techniques
• Enthusiastic about working on an interdisciplinary research project
• Excellent communications skills in English (spoken and written) are essential
• Conscientious and inclusive working style
• Ability to positively contribute to a supportive working environment

Highly desirable, one or more of the following:

• Enzyme assay development
• Protein engineering
• Comfort with light scripting for data analysis