"Assistant Professor"

The Department of Pharmacology, Addiction Science, and Toxicology (PHAST) in the College of Medicine at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center (UTHSC) invites applications for a tenure-track faculty position available immediately to conduct research in the areas of substance use disorders, neurotoxicology, or pharmacology of neurodegenerative diseases.

With its strong nucleus of Faculty devoted to neuropharmacology research, the PHAST Department at UTHSC has continuously increased its level of extramural funding within the last decade. The Department is located in the state-of-the-art UTHSC Translational Science Research Building (http://www.uthsc.edu/pharmacology), which also houses researchers from the Departments of Physiology, and of Genetics, Genomics and Informatics. The candidates will join a very strong core of PHAST scientists devoted to investigating varied aspects of substance use disorders, neurotoxicology, and neurodegenerative disease, including: genetics and genomics bases of alcohol/nicotine/opioid use disorders; mitochondrial stress contribution to FASD; alcohol-induced disruption of fetal brain circulation and developmental consequences; neurocircuitry and neurotransmission involved in compulsive drug-seeking; neurobiological and neuropeptide transmission in the extended amygdala underlying escalated drug self-administration and its relation to stress-susceptibility; subcellular mechanisms underlying alcohol-caffeine, alcohol-lipid, and alcohol-neurosteroid cerebrovascular effects; ionic mechanisms underlying brain hypoperfusion induced by inhalants; cellular and molecular bases of neurodegenerative conditions, including AD, Parkinson’s, vascular dementias, and retinal neurodegeneration. Strong, collaborative research opportunities exist with the UTHSC Department of Anatomy and Neurobiology and the UTHSC inter-departmental Neuroscience Institute, both under new leadership, as well as the Knoxville campus of the University of Tennessee, the University of Memphis, and St. Jude Children's Research Hospital.

The UTHSC College of Medicine offers a generous start up package, and the Institution includes several core facilities, such as the Lab Animal Care Unit, the Regional Biocontainment Laboratory, the Molecular Resource Center, the Flow Cytometry and Flow Sorting core, the Molecular Bioinformatics Core, the Proteomics and Metabolomics Core, the Imaging Core, which houses a super-resolution microscopy unit, the Research Histology Core, a new Structural Biology core with access to several outside core facilities and national labs, and free access to the ISAAC-NG high-performance computing clusters at the University of Tennessee. Furthermore, the PHAST Department sustains common facilities in laser confocal microscopy, laser capture microscopy, high-resolution fluorescence microscopy, and high-throughput robotic electrophysiology.

Candidates will be considered at the rank of ASSISTANT PROFESSOR. All applicants should have a Ph.D. or equivalent degree, relevant postdoctoral experience, and a strong record of research productivity, optimal record of publications, and other academic accomplishments. Applicants should demonstrate their ability to secure external (extrainstitutional) funding for their research program (e.g., NIH K99/R00). Candidates employing innovative methodologies in their research program are especially encouraged to apply, e.g., microfluidics and organoids, in vivo (e.g., miniscopes) or high-resolution imaging, AFM, computational neuroscience, large-scale neuronal ensemble electrophysiological recording, novel viral and genetic strategies for targeting and manipulating cells of the nervous system.

Applicants should submit a one-page cover letter, Curriculum Vitae, a summary of research interests and future plans (up to 3 pages), and names of three references as a single PDF file to the Chair of the search committee, Professor Anna N. Bukiya, Ph.D, by email to abukiya@uthsc.edu. Please include the phrase PHAST26 in the subject line and fill out the following short form https://forms.gle/G66rhGhqQWq9aGnD7.