High-Throughput Assay Development - Automation Specialist
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Employment type:
Full time
Experience required:
Intermediate
Salary
Salary not provided
About the company:
Our mission is simple: to eradicate the use of toxic vegetable oils in our food system.
These destructive oils are hidden in everything, from salad dressings and condiments, to fast food and Michelin-starred restaurants, accounting for 20% of our daily calories.
Vegetable oils have been linked to weight gain, diabetes, cancer, cognitive decline, heart disease, autoimmune disease, and more. They increase risk of death by 62% — more than heavy drinking or moderate smoking — and are a leading cause of deforestation and climate change.
Zero Acre Farms is replacing the most problematic part of our food system with oils and fats that don't make us sick or destroy the planet.
And we’re doing it by introducing a new category of healthy oils and fats, made by fermentation, not deforestation.
Fermentation is the original culinary art, after fire. We use this ancient technique in a revolutionary way to produce oils and fats with the lowest levels of bad fats linked to inflammation and disease, while having a small environmental footprint.
As a team of food lovers, nutritionists, innovators, doctors, and PhDs, we’re banding together to save our health and planet without sacrificing the foods we love.
The world needs an oil change. We hope you join us.
Why We Exist
We believe a healthier world is possible with better oils and fats.
Vegetable oils account for 20% of our daily calories and have been linked to chronic disease, inflammation, obesity, and cognitive decline, as well as deforestation, biodiversity loss, and climate change, with no end in sight.
Vegetable oils are now the most consumed food in the world behind rice and wheat and are the fastest growing sub sector of global agriculture. More vegetable oil is consumed globally than all beef, chicken, cheese, and shrimp, combined.
The world needs an oil change.
Zero Acre Farms is on a mission to replace destructive vegetable oils in the food system with healthier, more sustainable oils and fats made by fermentation. Our first product, Cultured Oil, just launched DTC as we look ahead to retail, foodservice, and food manufacturing expansion.
Our Team
We’re a team of food lovers, nutrition believers, innovators, doctors, sustainability advocates, PhD’s, and problem solvers. We believe in taking care of our health and our planet’s health without sacrificing the foods we love. We started Zero Acre Farms out of concern for what we’re all involuntarily putting into our bodies and the profound effect it’s having on our health and the natural world.
Zero Acre Farms is backed by an incredible group of investors, including mission-driven VC’s, celebrities, influencers, and change makers.
The Role
Zero Acre Farms is seeking a High Throughput Screening Associate/Automation Specialist to join our growing Bioanalytical Team. The successful candidate will be highly motivated with a solid experience in HTP assay development and execution using liquid handling robots and related automation tools. This position will work cross functionally to understand, miniaturize, and run automated assays to support the rapid development of new production cultures and processes, and will directly contribute to Zero Acre Farm’s mission to remove destructive vegetable oils from our food system.
Responsibilities
- Lead implementation and execution of high-throughput automated assays and workflows.
- Miniaturize and execute small scale fermentation screening and multi-step sample preparation for GC and LCMS analyses.
- Write scripts within existing commercial platform-specific software to drive operation of laboratory instruments and robotics for biological screening.
- Maintain laboratory automation instruments to support colony picking, liquid handling, plate management, and sample analysis, including Tecan Evo, Molecular Devices Qpix and Plate Readers, Agilent Bravo and Plate Sealer, Integra Viaflo and other.
- Organize and support validation and QC of automated screening protocols.
- Lead simplification and streamlining of HTP workflows with an eye for statistical precision, robustness, and time and material efficiencies.
- Collaborate with LIMS team to ensure robust sample tracking and data capture.
You and Your Experience
- BS or MS degree in biology, biochemistry, bioengineering, chemistry, chemical engineering or equivalent with 2+ years of relevant industry experience.
- Experience operating automated liquid handling systems.
- Proven ability to develop screening assays and to optimize conditions to reduce variability.
- Strong data and statistics background applied to HTP screening.
- Direct experience with programming and management of a Tecan-Evo200.
- Experience with sterile techniques, HTP fermentation, solvent handling, and HTP preparation of samples for a diversity of biochemical, spectroscopic, and analytical assays.
- Familiarity with LIMS environments and statistical software packages, ability to script simple data analysis using R, Python, Matlab or similar are highly desirable.
- Strong communication skills.
- Strong time management and organizational skills with a keen attention to detail.
- Thrive in a fluid, dynamic start-up environment building capabilities from the ground up.
What We Offer
- An engaged and collaborative team that is working on solving a health and sustainability crisis that impacts everyone.
- The opportunity to help build company processes and culture from the ground up.
- Empowered team members with minimal bureaucracy.
- Competitive salary and meaningful equity.
- Flexible vacation time (minimum 3 weeks).
- Focus on uninterrupted deep work time.
- Medical, dental, vision, long-term disability, life coverage, health and dependent care FSA (flexible spending account)
- Additional perks like books and commuter assistance.
A Note From Our Founders
The majority of Americans are sick. Let that sink in. More people have a chronic disease than not in this country! 6 out of 10. And a hundred years ago, almost no one had a chronic disease. Our healthy life expectancy is decreasing for the first time in recorded history. Our solution so far has been more prescription drugs (in 2018, the average American filled eighteen prescriptions).
Our planet is also being destroyed by the day. The Amazon loses about 2 football fields of rainforest every minute, mostly to grow industrial monocrops like seed oils that make us sick. Species extinction is at an all time high. Some projections say we only have 60 harvests left before our soil doesn't support any more life.
The real issue? These problems are interconnected. We're destroying the planet to grow food that makes us sick.
How is this not one of the most important, urgent, and talked about issues of our generation? We want to change that. We want to slow down and ideally reverse the skyrocketing rates of chronic disease and environmental impact caused by what we eat. We truly believe that we can save millions of lives, as well as millions of acres of rainforest, if we are successful in our mission of replacing destructive vegetable oils in our food supply.
That’s what drives us, and we hope you’ll join us.
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