The Opportunity

The heart of insitro’s strategy is the development of novel, innovative methods in machine learning and high-throughput biology that address key bottlenecks in the drug development pipeline. Genetic epilepsies and neurodevelopmental diseases in particular are an area of great potential to derive therapeutic benefit for patients using insitro’s platform. The Associate Scientist III/Scientist I, Neuroscience will partner with scientific and project teammates to develop and execute biochemical/cellular assays and in vitro mechanistic experimentation to support the advancement of our pipeline. The candidate will work closely with a team of multidisciplinary scientists, in vitro assay developers, in vivo pharmacologists, and translational biologists to support the progression of our drug development pipeline. We value a highly collaborative working style centered on effective communication to drive results at a fearless pace. If you are a highly motivated individual and teammate with a strong desire to impact patients in diseases related to neuroscience, we invite you to consider joining our team.

You will be joining a biotech startup with long-term stability due to significant funding, but yet is very much in formation. A lot can change in this early and exciting phase, providing many opportunities for significant impact. You will work closely with a versatile team, learn a broad range of skills, and help shape insitro’s culture, strategic direction, and outcomes. Join us, and help make a difference to patients!

Primary Responsibilities

• Develop, optimize, and perform cellular and biochemical assays to support mechanistic understanding in our drug discovery programs as well as target identification and validation efforts within the Neuroscience therapeutic area.
• Collaborate with colleagues within the Neuroscience therapeutic area on cross-functional teams encompassing in vitro assay development scientists, cell biologists and in vivo pharmacologists.
• Culture primary rodent and iPSC-derived neuronal subtypes cell-types related to neurodevelopmental and neurodegenerative disease models.
• Maintain accurate documentation of experiments in electronic lab notebook (ELN) and follow all laboratory training and safety requirements
• Evaluate and implement new enabling technologies and methodologies related to assay development and target validation packages to support drug discovery programs within the Neuroscience therapeutic area
• Collaborate with colleagues on multi-disciplinary project teams to provide scientific/technical contributions and deliver project goals

About You

• A PhD with one (1) year of experience or BS/MS in Biochemistry, Cell Biology, Pharmacology or a relevant scientific field, with a minimum of five (5) years of drug discovery experience in a biotech/pharmaceutical setting
• Experience with the development and execution of cellular assays at mid and high throughput scale, using a wide range of experimental methods and detection technologies including advanced microscopy, immunoassays (IF, ELISA, Biochemical), functional assays (Electrophysiology, MEA, Calcium Imaging).
• Experience in high throughput imaging and assay development from image based systems.
• Familiarity with coordination and shared documentation (Gsuite, Slack, Smartsheets).
• Demonstrated ability to work in cross-functional teams to advance drug discovery, with excellent organization and communication skills

Nice to Have

• Experience and knowledge of neurological and psychiatric disorders and in vitro models with an emphasis on epileptic, neurodegenerative, and cognitive disorders
• Hands on experience with in vivo animal models, including animal dissections, tissue sectioning, surgeries, and other in vivo techniques.
• Experience with molecular biology and functional genomics techniques such as CRISPR and siRNA, and antisense oligonucleotides (ASOs) .
• Experience with analysis scripts in python, R and collaborative platforms such as jupyter notebooks.
• Hands-on experience with high throughput automated cell culture and dosing equipment (Echo, Plate washers, Certus, Hamilton, etc), interaction with automation engineers a plus.