Scientist I, Biologics Downstream Process Development
Boston, MA
Process Development & Analytics /
Full-time /
On-site
Our mission at Asimov is to advance humanity's ability to design living systems, enabling biotechnologies with outsized benefit to society. We're developing a mammalian synthetic biology platform––from cells to software––to enable the design and manufacture of next-generation therapeutics.
We are seeking a Scientist I, Biologics Downstream Process Development to join our team in Boston, MA and help push the boundaries of biopharmaceutical and gene therapy process development. This role is for a technical expert who will conduct bioprocess engineering for biologics, design complex experimental approaches to improve our workflows and systems, apply scaling principles to both upstream and downstream processing (with emphasis on downstream), and coordinate interdepartmental project efforts.
The successful candidate will work closely with Asimov’s synthetic biology, cell line development, and analytical development teams, along with interfacing with external partners. The role reports to the Head of Process Development and is a unique opportunity to work at a nimble, forward-thinking synthetic biology startup and help build the future of biological engineering.
About the Role:
- You will perform clarifications, downstream processing/purification, and product quality assessment with analytical tools.
- Be involved hands-on in projects that include bioreactor scale-up (2L+) process development, harvest, and downstream process development.
- Execute process optimization and characterization studies at Ambr15 and Ambr250 scale when needed.
- Serve as a technical subject matter expert (SME) in at-scale process development for both internal and external projects.
- Represent the process development team on cross-functional projects, making decisions for process development activities and effectively communicating results, progress, and plans.
- Work together with the strategic alliance and commercial teams to technology transfer developed processes and early-look materials to external partners.
- Collaborate with internal process modeling team to test hypotheses for developing robust predictive models using DOE approaches, machine learning algorithms, and multi-omics analysis.
- Partner with the software team to develop integrated data platforms and analysis for streamlined data analysis.
- Author, review, and approve process development reports and technology transfer protocols.
- Organize and document experiments and data in an electronic lab notebook.
About You:
- You have a PhD in Biological Engineering, Chemical Engineering, Cell Biology, Molecular Biology, or a related field with 0-2 years of relevant hands-on experience in bioprocessing. Alternatively, a MS with minimum of 4 years or a Bachelors with minimum 6 years of hands-on industry experience.
- You have downstream purification experience, optimizing ProA and UF/DF steps. This role requires experience using chromatography systems and their HMI (i.e., AKTA/UNICORN). Additional experience on additional chromatography and polishing steps (e.g., IEX, HIC) is highly preferable.
- Mammalian (CHO) process development is squarely in your wheelhouse. Experience with LVV and AAV process development is beneficial, but not essential.
- Knowledge and experience in the technology transfer of manufacturing processes and generation of GLP tox material is preferred.
- You are a creative problem solver and get excited about the opportunity to drive the creation of industry-disruptive technology.
- Being detail-oriented is not just a sound bite for you, it is part of your DNA. Keeping track of a bunch of moving parts is easy for you because you are highly organized. It is not your first time following a standardized workflow or pipeline.
- You are an expert in spreadsheets such as Google Sheets or Excel and ideally Spotfire, Google Apps Script (JavaScript) and/or BigQuery to facilitate data management and analysis.
- Experienced using DOE software to develop robust experiments.
We're fueled by a vision to transform biological engineering into a fully-fledged engineering discipline. Should you join our team, you will grow with a constantly evolving organization and push the frontiers of synthetic biology. Company culture is key to Asimov, and ours is a culture of recombination; we believe that our mission can only be achieved by bringing together a diverse team with a mixture of backgrounds and perspectives.
