Postdoctoral Fellow

Approx Start date: 01/01/2027

Contract Length: 1 year (renewable)

Responsibilities: The Postdoctoral Research Associate will play a central role in the execution and coordination of the proposed research program, providing scientific, technical, and operational leadership for vaccine evaluation studies. The postdoctoral researcher will coordinate with commercial collaborators, including Aldevron and Precision NanoSystems, to facilitate the production, formulation, delivery, quality control, and documentation of mRNA-lipid nanoparticle (mRNA-LNP) vaccine candidates. The individual will also coordinate with the University of Nebraska–Lincoln Life Sciences Annex (LSA) and other institutional core facilities to ensure compliance with biosafety and animal welfare regulations, oversee study logistics, and coordinate the scheduling of animal procedure rooms, housing, and support facilities for complex in vivo studies.

The postdoctoral researcher will design, perform, and oversee mouse and ferret vaccination and challenge studies conducted under BSL-2, ABSL-2, BSL-3, and ABSL-3 containment, as appropriate. Responsibilities will include vaccine administration, anesthesia, animal monitoring and husbandry, infectious virus challenge, clinical scoring, sample collection, and humane endpoint assessments. The individual will oversee the collection, processing, storage, and quality assurance of biological specimens, including blood, serum, nasal washes, bronchoalveolar lavage fluid (BAL), and tissue samples for immunological, virological, and pathological analyses. The postdoctoral researcher will provide day-to-day supervision, mentoring, and technical training for graduate students, undergraduate students, and laboratory personnel involved in animal procedures, biosafety practices, specimen collection, laboratory assays, and data acquisition. The individual will help ensure compliance with Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC), Institutional Biosafety Committee (IBC), NIH, USDA, and institutional regulations while maintaining accurate laboratory records and coordinating study documentation.

In addition to experimental responsibilities, the postdoctoral researcher will contribute to experimental design, protocol development, statistical analyses, interpretation of results, and integration of multidisciplinary datasets. The individual will assist the investigators in preparing progress reports, manuscripts for peer-reviewed publication, conference presentations, and future grant applications, while actively disseminating research findings to the scientific community. The postdoctoral researcher is expected to contribute intellectually to the overall direction of the project and facilitate successful completion of project milestones through effective coordination of collaborators, trainees, and institutional resources.