Postdoctoral Fellow Research Opportunity in Immunometabolism, Cardiovascular & Metabolic Disease

Postdoctoral Fellow / Staff Scientist Research Opportunity in Immunometabolism, Cardiovascular Disease, Metabolic Disease, Immunology

Department Name/Job Location: This opportunity is at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and UPMC in the Vascular Medicine Institute and Department of Internal Medicine. The laboratory is located at Starzl Basic Science Tower on the Medical School Campus.

Job Type/Schedule: This opportunity is full-time. Hours are generally normal business hours but may vary due to the timing of experiments and other research activity deadlines.

Essential Functions: The interest of this NIH-funded academic laboratory (PI: Babak Razani, www.razani.org) within the Center for Immunometabolism (cim.pitt.edu) is understanding the mechanisms of atherosclerosis, diabetes, obesity, and fatty liver disease with special emphasis on the roles of macrophages and immunometabolic processes. We and others have shown that perturbations in cellular processes involving mTOR and nutrient sensing, autophagy and lysosomes, and inflammatory signaling including inflammasomes play a critical role in macrophage dysfunction and subsequent cardiometabolic disease. Some of our relevant primary papers include (Yeh, et al JCI 2025; Zhang, et al Nature Metabolism 2024; Zhang, et al Circulation Research 2023; Jeong, et al Autophagy 2021; Zhang, et al Nature Metabolism 2020). The primary focus of the lab will be to understand the mechanisms by which these cellular processes affect metabolism, determine if their manipulation ameliorates metabolic disease, and translate our findings to develop novel therapeutics in human coronary artery disease, obesity, and insulin resistance.

These questions are being studied using a combination of molecular and cell biology approaches in mouse primary cells/cell-lines, mouse models, human monocytes/monocyte-derived macrophages, induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC)-derived macrophages, and circulating monocytes and tissue macrophages from humans enrolled in clinical studies. The laboratory has also established a robust infrastructure for early-stage clinical studies to study the immune cells and metabolic tissue of human subjects. Additionally, there is a recent focus for the lab on “omics” approaches to macrophage phenotyping and using CRISPR/Cas9 techniques to target newly identified genes for subsequent cellular and organismal phenotyping.

Primary Duties & Responsibilities:

1. Leads the design, execution and reporting of 2-3 research projects in collaboration with the PI. This includes developing hypotheses to be tested and ways of testing them.
2. Prepares, writes, and submits papers on the research projects.
3. Submits Postdoctoral or Career Development grant proposals with the approval of the PI and Department Head. Assists with grant preparation and reporting.
4. Participates in research projects with other investigators and institutions as collaborations.
5. Complies with established safety procedures and maintaining required documentation on laboratory and specimen conditions.

Preferred Qualifications:

1. Candidates with extensive prior experience in cell, molecular biology, immunology, metabolism, or related fields with a Ph.D. degree and four years of experience in research lab operations, or an equivalent combination of education and experience equaling nine years are encouraged to apply.
2. Mammalian cell culture.
3. Basic Microbiology skills.
4. Experience with microscopy especially confocal/fluorescence microscopy.
5. Proficiency in basic molecular biology techniques including DNA, RNA, protein isolation and purification, PCR, cloning, reverse transcription PCR, immunoblot, ELISA.
6. Experience with immunocyto- and histo-chemistry, experience with frozen/paraffin tissue.
7. Experience with flow cytometry and immunology.
8. Ability to perform small animal procedures.
9. Experience with CRISPR/Cas9 targeting strategies including in vitro screens.
10. Experience with RNAseq and other “omics” strategies with related bioinformatics tools to handle large data sets from RNA seq, scRNA seq, proteomics, and lipidomics experiments.