Scientist, Photosynthesis Assay Development - Plant Biology Institute in Oxford

Join us at EIT: At the Ellison Institute of Technology (EIT), we’re on a mission to translate scientific discovery into real world impact. We bring together visionary scientists, technologists, engineers, researchers, educators and innovators to tackle humanity’s greatest challenges in four transformative areas:

• Health, Medical Science & Generative Biology
• Food Security & Sustainable Agriculture
• Climate Change & Managing CO₂
• Artificial Intelligence & Robotics

This is ambitious work - work that demands curiosity, courage, and a relentless drive to make a difference. At EIT, you’ll join a community built on excellence, innovation, tenacity, trust, and collaboration, where bold ideas become real-world breakthroughs. Together, we push boundaries, embrace complexity, and create solutions to scale ideas from lab to society. Explore more at www.eit.org.

Welcome to the Plant Biology Institute: The Plant Biology Institute, headed by Professor Steve Kelly, is a key part of the Ellison Institute of Technology (EIT) Oxford. The institute aims to develop impactful and commercially sustainable solutions for improving global food production and planetary health through pioneering plant science research. The Plant Biology Institute will unite world-class researchers who are focused on expanding the frontiers of plant science. Our research is focused on enhancing our ability to feed the planet while simultaneously improving the climate and ecosystem outcomes of food production. By embedding cutting-edge plant science research within an organisation that is focused on solving global challenges at scale, we aim to accelerate the timeline from discovery to global impact.

Areas of exploration include:

• Improved plant productivity, both indoors and outside.
• Reduced reliance on inputs including water, fertilisers, pesticides, and herbicides.
• Novel decarbonised plant-based production platforms for food and medicines.
• Advanced technologies that speed up discovery and deployment in plants.

Researchers will have access to state-of-the-art laboratory and plant growth facilities and have opportunities to collaborate with experts at the forefront of research on AI, automation, and generative biology across the EIT ecosystem. They will also work with global leaders in market development, commercialisation, and impact creation. The Plant Biology Institute has long-term substantial funding to support the unique scale and ambition of its vision.

Your Role: EIT is seeking a highly motivated and skilled Scientist in Photosynthesis Assay Development to join the ‘Yield and Photosynthesis’ programme. This initiative aims to increase sustainable agricultural output from existing farmland by developing crop varieties with higher yield and greater resilience to a changing climate. The successful candidate will develop and apply experimental platforms to evaluate the effects of engineered protein variants on photosynthetic efficiency, photoprotection and carbon assimilation. By combining transient plant expression systems, molecular biology, and advanced photosynthetic phenotyping, this work will accelerate the identification and validation of proteins capable of improving crop productivity. The ultimate goal of this research is to deliver transformative improvements in agricultural productivity and resilience, enabling farmers to achieve greater yields from existing agricultural land while reducing the environmental footprint of food production.

Your Responsibilities: The main responsibilities of the successful candidate will be to develop, optimise, and scale experimental platforms for evaluating the effects of engineered protein variants on photosynthetic performance. Successful delivery of these research objectives will require expertise in developing and applying robust photosynthetic phenotyping assays, plant expression systems, molecular biology, and plant biochemistry. The successful candidate will apply strong experimental design and troubleshooting skills to establish robust, reproducible and scalable workflows suitable for high-throughput evaluation of candidate proteins. Insights generated from this work will directly inform go/no-go decisions for downstream crop transformation and validation. The successful candidate will work closely with computational scientists, protein engineers, and plant biologists to translate candidate variants into experimentally testable hypotheses. This role offers a unique opportunity to develop innovative photosynthetic phenotyping platforms for crop improvement while collaborating across multidisciplinary teams to drive innovation from lab to global impact.

The scientist will be expected to contribute to publications and IP generation and play an active role in translating research into real-world and commercial solutions aligned with EITʼs mission of humane technological advancement. This is an exciting opportunity to perform cutting-edge research in a dynamic, well-supported, and purpose-driven environment.

Additional Responsibilities:

• Collaborate with cross-functional teams to incorporate cutting edge research techniques into experiments.
• Support the photosynthetic characterization of transformed crop plants as candidate traits progress through the validation pipeline.
• Present scientific work at seminars within the team and at external meetings, including contributing to institute-wide discussions on developments within the field.
• Collaborate with experts at the forefront of research on AI, automation, and generative biology across the EIT ecosystem.
• Draft scientific papers and contribute to preparation of publications.
• Assist in the translation of scientific results into commercial opportunities consistent with the EIT humane endeavours.
• Recognise and act on opportunities for the creation of IP and cooperating in patent protection and in impact delivery.

Requirements

Essential Knowledge, Skills and Experience:

• Completed PhD in plant physiology, plant molecular biology, plant synthetic biology, plant biochemistry, or a related discipline.
• Demonstrated experience measuring photosynthetic performance using chlorophyll fluorescence approaches, including PAM fluorometry and interpretation of parameters such as PSII efficiency, electron transport rate (ETR), non-photochemical quenching (NPQ), and related photosynthetic traits.
• Demonstrated experience measuring photosynthetic performance across one or more photosynthetic systems (e.g. intact plants, leaf discs, plant cell cultures, algae or cyanobacteria).
• Experience designing robust, reproducible and scalable experimental workflows for evaluating photosynthetic traits.
• Strong proficiency in molecular biology, including PCR, primer and construct design, molecular cloning, nucleic acid and protein extraction, gel electrophoresis and immunodetection.
• Excellent skills in experimental design, data analysis, statistical evaluation, and visualisation.
• Demonstrated ability to conduct independent research to the highest standard, and to publish results in peer-reviewed journals.

Desirable Knowledge, Skills and Experience:

• Demonstrated experience working with a range of transient plant expression systems, including cell cultures, protoplasts, and/or Agrobacterium-infiltrated tissues.
• Demonstrated experience measuring photosynthesis using gas exchange systems (e.g., LI-CORs) and analysing photosynthetic responses to environmental and genetic perturbations.
• Demonstrated experience using fluorescent reporters to visualize protein expression levels and/or subcellular protein localisation.
• Demonstrated experience in genetic engineering applied to a range of plant species, including stable transgenic approaches as well as CRISPR/Cas-mediated genome editing.
• Demonstrated experience in advanced microscopy analysis and imaging of plant cells or tissues using light, fluorescence, and confocal microscopy techniques.
• Experience analysing large biological datasets using Python and/or R.
• Experience preparing, processing or analysing next-generation sequencing (NGS) datasets.

Benefits

Our Benefits:

• Salary dependent on experience + travel allowance + bonus
• Enhanced holiday. Our annual leave allowance is 25 days plus 8 bank holidays and an additional 3 days between Christmas and New Year. You will also have the opportunity to purchase an additional 5 days annual leave in January and July.
• Pension - Employer contribution 7.5%, minimum employee contribution 5%
• Life Assurance.
• Income Protection
• Private Medical Insurance as standard for you, your partner and any dependents. Including hospital Cash Plan
• Employee discounts
• Electric car scheme
• Nursery Salary Sacrifice scheme
• Cycle to Work Scheme
• Family Planning
• Neurodiversity support including advice and assessments
• Coaching & Therapy services

Working Together – What It Involves: You must be eligible to work in the UK with a willingness to travel as necessary. You must be based in, or within easy commuting distance of, Oxford. During peak periods, some longer hours may be required and some working across multiple time zones due to the global nature of the programme.