We are seeking

to appoint a Postdoctoral Research Assistant for the Oxford University-based Protein Crystallography Small Research Facility (PX-SRF) under the supervision of Professor Frank von Delft and Dr Lizbé Koekemoer. We were recently awarded a Cancer Grand Challenges grant, funded by NCI and CRUK, as part of Team PROTECT (Harnessing PROTEin degradation for Advanced Childhood Tumours) with the ambitious goal of targeting drivers of paediatric cancers for degradation using PROTAC or molecular glue technology. PROTECT is an international, dynamic, and multi-disciplinary collaboration combining leading academics in medicinal chemistry, degrader technology, structural and molecular biologists, oncologists and clinicians in addition to patient advocates. You will support all PX-SRF related activities, with a focus on oncology related projects, the majority of which are in the PROTECT pipeline. Your role is to execute and drive crystallography projects including the production of the correct protein for crystallization, optimizing crystal systems for fragment screening, crystallographic fragment screening (XChem), data analysis, supporting follow-up compound design and analysis. You will also be involved with the development of biochemical and/or biophysical assays for the characterization of protein ligand complexes. Experience in crystallography and protein-ligand complexes is essential, with knowledge of crystallographic fragment screening and structure-based small molecule discovery highly desirable. In addition, as part of the PX-SRF you are expected to provide support to the wider CMD crystallography community and will be involved in training and hosting students and academic visitors. As part of the von Delft group you will work closely with our XChem team, based at Diamond Light Source at Harwell Campus, and you will have the opportunity to get involved in follow-up compound design and XChem pipeline methodology development. This is a unique opportunity to be part of a large inter-disciplinary project team and to collaborate with a diverse set of scientists across the University, and globally, in an academic setting both on scientific outputs and the development of new methodologies, algorithms and tools for data analysis and dissemination. As part of PROTECT you will interact with various scientist to transfer protocols, help develop research questions, to present results and plan follow-up experiments.