Senior Scientist, Immunology

Role

Vivodyne is heavily focused on changing the way the human immune system is researched, and the way its therapeutic responses are evaluated. To achieve this, we focus on growing human innate and adaptive immune systems, both as native tissues (human bone marrow, thymus, and lymph nodes) and in the context of other tissues (tissue-specific responses).

To help us in our ambitious mission, we seek an expert immunologist to join us in our biotech team to operate at the interface of immunology and bioengineering. You will be an integral part of the team responsible for designing lab-grown realistic immune systems using our massively automated robotic platforms for growing 3D human tissues, and be responsible for leading projects that capture, modulate, and leverage human adaptive immune responses. You’ll leverage our advanced microfluidic devices to deploy these human tissues reliably, in order to discover, validate, and test the safety and efficacy of new drug candidates. This allows us to gather human data at AI scale before ever testing in clinical trials, and to avoid the inaccuracy of animal models — particularly in the domain of human immunity.

Key Responsibilities:

• Lead the design, development, and continuous advancement of lab-grown human organ tissues (healthy and diseased) to create next-generation pharmaceutical pipelines and fundamental research on how human physiology functions.
• Iterate quickly and apply a strong engineering approach to rapidly develop and improve new tissues, and overcome complex biological or technological challenges.
• Apply wide-ranging domain expertise to understand and explain your plans and results to talented experts in other fields; serve as a subject matter expert in adaptive immunology (especially humoral response and adaptive/innate immunity interphase) for interdisciplinary teams.
• Independently plan, execute, and analyze new experiments with Vivodyne’s platform, and contribute to the design and expansion of a capability roadmap.
• Lead outcome analysis by coordinating with Vivodyne’s data science and AI teams, and reporting/presenting experimental data to internal teams and external stakeholders with an exceptional level of polish and presence.
• Deploy engineered tissues at massive scale (1,000’s of conditions in parallel) for fundamental research on human physiology and to understand human responses to therapeutics or pathogens.
• Document your work in high detail using Vivodyne’s online software tools and notebooks, and be responsible for inventory management, procurement, and look-ahead planning related to the projects you lead.
• This role demands a blend of biological skills, meticulous attention to detail, and the ability to work collaboratively in a team-oriented environment. You will contribute directly to the success and reliability of our products, playing a critical role in the advancement of our therapeutic discovery and development efforts.
• Key interface with AI, data science, software engineering and robotics to communicate project needs and gaps is essential.

Requirements and Expectations

You Are Relentless. At Vivodyne, we tackle exceptionally difficult problems that often end in failure. Total success is infrequent, yet deeply meaningful and satisfying. This role demands steadfast resilience, unyielding curiosity, and an obsessive commitment to revolutionizing how we create interventions to restore, improve, and extend human health. Your dedication and relentless drive are essential to accomplishing what others deem impossible. You are too stubborn to accept failure; you are encouraged and emboldened by it. You adapt quickly to changing strategies and are creative yet efficient in your problem-solving. You thrive in an environment that requires unwavering focus and the willingness to go the extra mile, while surrounded by a team of equally driven and passionate individuals also committed to achieving the extraordinary.

Science & Engineering. You have a deep, fundamental understanding of how our immune system resists pathogens and mediates inflammation, and the roles that cells of both the adaptive and innate systems serve. You understand how to manipulate the function of the immune system to yield behaviors you intend, from cancer-cell killing to antibody production. You bring an engineering-like perspective to biology, seeking to invent and build, not only discover.

You reason deeply, seeking to understand the first principles underlying your work, and bring deep scientific reasoning to immunological questions. You understand how to dissect the workings of the immune system and manipulate it where necessary. You are comfortable working in a high-quality laboratory environment with strict sterility practices and have a good understanding of the behaviors required. Your hands-on experience in a laboratory environment, and the ability to quickly learn and adapt to new techniques and methods, accelerate your team’s ability to discover and develop lifesaving drugs using the engineered tissues that you generate. You actively use your exemplary knowledge of immunology practices to quickly understand, improve, test, and leverage the complex immune tissues that you design.

Reproducibility and Quality Control. You have a proven track record of producing work of the highest quality, with an acute attention to detail. You understand how to create, follow, and disseminate laboratory procedures that minimize variability and maximize consistency and efficiency. You are exceptionally data-driven in your decision-making, and always work from or to first principles. You question your conclusions constantly. You actively form hypotheses for potential sources of error and test those hypotheses to understand the sensitivities of the systems you generate. You document the results of your work in precise detail. You take exceptional pride in your diligence, with a proven ability to generate complex immunological responses in vitro that require a high degree of accuracy and consistency. You have an exceptional work ethic and dedication to working to high standards, and feel a sigh of relief when surrounded by others who deeply appreciate (and produce) polished work. You thrive in a culture whose values and behavior align to produce world-leading products and processes with impeccable consistency.

Teamwork. You thrive in a team-oriented environment, where collaboration and communication are key to achieving our collective goals. You are willing to share your expertise and learn from others, fostering a positive and productive working environment. You document your learnings in a data-driven manner and are excited to share them with others. You explain and present your thoughts clearly, understand how to summarize the key parts of your data, and enjoy working with scientifically competent management. You use your excellent communication skills, both written and verbal, to document your work clearly and concisely and share information effectively with your team. Your adaptability allows you to embrace and improve new techniques, ensuring our bioengineering R&D remains sharp at the cutting edge.

Continuous Improvement. You take pride in operational excellence and continuously seek new ways to improve our mechanisms and methodologies. You actively engage in troubleshooting and problem-solving, ensuring the reproducibility and biological performance of our engineered tissues. You interrogate and resolve the root cause of process inefficiencies, shortcomings, or failures by being meticulous about tracking and documenting irregularities and unexpected deviations. You leverage your growing expertise with a process to consider and propose improvements to make it faster and more precise. You are always on the lookout for ways to make our systems simpler and more efficient, whether through consolidating systems, overhauling existing systems, or updating documentation. You consider no detail too small to improve, and no imperfection too minor to correct. You believe deeply that continuous iteration toward perfection at a large scale is the true mark of excellence, and seek to work alongside a team that celebrates your focused efforts toward this goal.

Qualifications

• PhD in Immunology or related field with at least 2 years of postdoctoral experience in adaptive immunity on humoral response and T/B cell immunology; evidence of “top 5%” accomplishments.
• Prior experience in the biotechnology industry (minimum 2 years).
• Experience with microfluidic devices, microphysiological systems, organoids, and/or organ-on-chip technologies is a significant plus.
• Extensive hands-on laboratory experience in cellular immunological assays such as multi-color flow cytometry / FACS, ELISA/Luminex, immunofluorescence staining and confocal microscopy, cell proliferation assays, cytotoxicity assays, and understanding of immunological biomarkers for core immune cell populations.
• Experience with immune cell culture differentiation methodologies; phenotypic and functional characterization of immune cells, especially B/T cell immunology; experience with isolation and culture of primary human cells; experience isolating blood components (B cells, T cells, monocytes) and culturing them in vitro is a plus.
• Ability to solve complex problems with minimal supervision, adapt to changing priorities, interface with all levels of internal management, as well as program sponsors and subcontractors.
• Demonstrated ability to handle multiple competing priorities in a fast-paced environment.
• Ability to communicate effectively to a team and with project stakeholders in meetings, Slack, or in written formats such as process documents, design proposals, and quality reports.