Experimental Scientist (Open Application)

About us
Safeguarding the future of food. Biographica is on a mission to accelerate the development of more productive, sustainable, nutritious & climate-resilient food sources. To achieve this, we're building the world’s first ML-driven target discovery platform for crop gene-editing.

From drug target discovery to crop target discovery. While gene-editing of crops is becoming ever more efficient, identifying which genes to edit and how remains a significant challenge. To overcome this bottleneck, we use cutting-edge deep learning to accurately and efficiently identify high value genetic targets for crop gene-editing. Our approach draws inspiration from recent advancements in the drug discovery space, incorporating transformers, graphs & causal-ML to build a best-in-class discovery platform for plant sciences.

Team
Led by co-founders Dom (CTO) and Cecy (CEO), we are now a team of 10, including 2 ML engineers, 2 data engineers, and 3 bioinformaticians. We primarily work together in person from our office in Spitalfields, London, 4 days per week but this role would be based in our new labs in Rothamsted research, Harpenden.

What we're looking for
We are setting up lab capabilities to generate data for our ML foundation models and experimentally validate our gene ID platform. You will be one of our first experimental hires, helping run daily operations in the lab, establishing and validating required molecular assays and communicating with our computational scientists to design experiments. Your first priorities will be:

• Designing (or assisting with design of) experiments for target validation in planta
• Supporting with establishment of relevant assays for multi-omic data collection & protoplast reporter assays
• Working as part of a small team of highly capable scientists to study diverse questions in gene expression and gene to trait studies.

Core responsibilities
Experimental design and conducting of experiments to evaluate predicted trait improvements in planta. Multi-omics data collection (WGS, RNA-seq, Fluorescent readouts) to train/fine-tune Biographica’s ML models. Supporting with establishment and validation of protoplast gene expression quantification assays. Clear communication with computational scientists about experimental validation and design. Coordinate with Rothamsted’s horticultural service to ensure healthy plant material for experiments.

Additional responsibilities
Day-to-day maintenance of lab equipment (we will use Rothamsted services as much as possible to free up time for scientific work).

Core competencies
PhD in Plant Sciences and ideally ≥1 years of PostDoc or industry experience. Expertise & experience with collection of ≥1 -Omics modality. Experience in cloning. Experience in plant transformation protocols. Appreciation for the importance of robust experimental design, rigorous data collection and documentation. Ability to communicate across disciplines. We are a machine learning-first company with a team of machine learning engineers, data engineers, computational biologists and bioinformaticians and we all have to find a common language to work on our shared goal of rapid and accurate gene discovery for agricultural traits. Experience working with A. thaliana and Maize (or another monocot). Full professional proficiency in English.

Nice to have competencies
Experience with ELNs. Experience with phenotyping. Experience with sequencing work (illumina, ONT, pacbio). Experience with lab licences (e.g. DEFRA), phytosanitary certification and MTAs.