Associate Scientist, Postdoctoral Fellow

Job Description

Development of a Cell-Line Agnostic Cell Painting Platform for Drug Discovery.

Be a part of the legacy: Postdoctoral Research Fellow Program

Our Research Laboratories' Postdoctoral Research Fellow Program aims to be a best-in-industry program for industrial postdoctoral researchers, designed to provide you with an academic focus in a commercial environment. With the resources, reach, and expertise of a large pharmaceutical company, postdoctoral researchers will be positioned to excel in an institution committed to breakthrough innovation in research and discovery.

Position Overview:

We are seeking a Postdoctoral Scientist to join the Quantitative Biosciences (QB) department to develop a flexible, cell line-agnostic morphological profiling platform to characterize perturbations of cell proliferation. The successful candidate will work at the intersection of cell pharmacology, automation and image and data analysis, combining high content imaging techniques with advanced AI/ML to generate unified morphological signatures across multiple cell lines. The postdoctoral research fellow will work in close collaboration with multiple functional areas in our company's network, including Cellular Pharmacology, Oncology and Data Science groups.

The platform developed as part of this postdoctoral fellowship aims to translate methods developed for multi-omics integration into a morphological profiling context. The established platform will create a catalog of perturbations, providing a valuable resource for interrogating compound-mediated effects. The data and AI/ML approaches established will potentially have applications beyond the initial project scope.

The candidate should have strong laboratory experience, ideally applying high content imaging or quantitative imaging to address biological and/or pharmacological research questions. Additionally, a solid grasp of statistical principles and familiarity with basic machine‑learning or deep‑learning concepts, plus a strong interest in further developing these skills.

Responsibilities include but are not limited to:

The specific responsibilities of the candidate include but are not limited to:

• Use automation equipment to perform Cell Painting experiments at scale

• Perform data management, preprocessing, and extraction of classical and learned imaging features for downstream analysis.

• Develop and apply machine learning and deep-learning approaches to produce cell-line agnostic morphological embeddings and classifiers

• Comply with our company's safety and data retention policies, including documenting experimental findings appropriately using an electronic lab notebook

• Collaborate closely with Data Science, High Content Imaging, and other Quantitative Biosciences teams.

• Prepare scientific reports, presentations, and manuscripts to be shared both internally and externally.

Education Minimum Requirement:  

• Candidates must hold a PhD or Ph.D. completed within 6 months of hire in Cell Biology, Molecular Biology, Computational Biology, or a related field.

Required Experience and Skills: 

• Hands-on expertise with cell culture and aseptic technique.

• Experience with fluorescence microscopy (high content imaging preferred).

• Demonstrated experience with quantitative image analysis.

• Experience in programming (Python, Matlab, or R) for data analysis and model development.

• Basic understanding of machine learning or deep learning methods.

• Excellent collaborative and communication skills for cross-disciplinary teamwork and clear reporting.

• Excellent organizational skills and a well-developed ability to multi-task effectively and make critical decisions.

Preferred Experience and Skills:

• Prior experience applying high content imaging, using multiple fluorescent markers for multiparametric assessment such as Cell Painting.

• Experience with assay automation, medium/high-throughput screening, and plate-based workflows.

• Relevant experience with oncology and/or cell proliferation mechanistic studies.

• Demonstrated experience building image based ML workflows (preprocessing, cell segmentation, feature extraction or learned embeddings, and model training/validation).

• Experience handling and analyzing large imaging datasets; familiarity with data management, metadata capture, and reproducible analysis pipelines.

• Familiarity with Python ML libraries (e.g., scikitlearn, PyTorch, TensorFlow) and managing large imaging datasets is desirable.

• Experience with cloud‑based computing platforms (e.g., AWS, GCP, or Azure).

• Experience integrating imaging data with additional modalities (transcriptomics, proteomics, brightfield) or working with large scale or foundation models for images.

• Experience with annotated screening collections or building reference libraries.

• Track record of publications and presentations in relevant fields.

postdoctoralopportunities

Required Skills:

Accountability, Adaptability, Analytical Chemistry, Cell Culture Techniques, Computational Biology, Data Analysis, Immunoassays, Immunochemistry, Immunology, In Vivo Mouse Models, Mathematical Biology, Molecular Biology, Neurology, Parasitology, Programming Languages, Science, Scientific Research, Scientific Writing, siRNA Knockdown, Statistical Analysis, Synthetic Chemistry

Preferred Skills:

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Effective September 5, 2023, employees in office-based positions in the U.S. will be working a Hybrid work consisting of three total days on-site per week, Monday - Thursday, although the specific days may vary by site or organization, with Friday designated as a remote-working day, unless business critical tasks require an on-site presence.This Hybrid work model does not apply to, and daily in-person attendance is required for, field-based positions; facility-based, manufacturing-based, or research-based positions where the work to be performed is located at a Company site; positions covered by a collective-bargaining agreement (unless the agreement provides for hybrid work); or any other position for which the Company has determined the job requirements cannot be reasonably met working remotely. Please note, this Hybrid work model guidance also does not apply to roles that have been designated as "remote".

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Employee Status:

Regular

Relocation:

Domestic

VISA Sponsorship:

Yes

Travel Requirements:

10%

Flexible Work Arrangements:

Not Applicable

Shift:

Not Indicated

Valid Driving License:

No

Hazardous Material(s):

n/a

Job Posting End Date:

12/6/2025

*A job posting is effective until 11:59:59PM on the day BEFORE the listed job posting end date. Please ensure you apply to a job posting no later than the day BEFORE the job posting end date.

Requisition ID:R372551

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