High Throughput Screening (HTS) Core Co-op
Our mission is to make biology easier to engineer. Ginkgo is constructing, editing, and redesigning the living world in order to answer the globe’s growing challenges in health, energy, food, materials, and more. Our bioengineers make use of an in-house automated foundry for designing and building new organisms.
When we can measure things, we make progress. We do not get what we expect; we get what we can inspect. As we measure it and understand what we are observing, it becomes possible for us to ask essential questions that will drive us to future discoveries.
The High Throughput Screening (HTS) Core team is the center of excellence for rapidly delivering high-quality screen data efficiently and at scale using the team’s talent and technical expertise in state-of-the-art instrumentation, robotic automation, software as well as breadth across organisms assays, and detection technologies. We leverage assay development and high-throughput screens to measure thousands of strains simultaneously for improved enzyme activity of critical steps or increased titers of final products. Ginkgo’s high-throughput screening pipelines deliver newly engineered cell strains.
As a High Throughput Screening (HTS) Core team Co-op, you are interested in learning how to use cutting-edge laboratory automation and software to understand, engineer, and operationalize biology. You will design and execute high-throughput screens and generate and interpret large data sets supporting the development of new processes. Other responsibilities will include learning about and applying new technical and scientific advances to your work, troubleshooting, data analysis, and reporting. The team interacts with and learns from many other teams at Ginkgo, so if you enjoy interdisciplinary work, HTS Core would be an excellent fit for you!
Possible project examples include:
- Creating a QC Pipeline for all instruments in the HTS group.
- Understand different instruments and their usage, and build protocols that test out their functionality
- Visualize and show data to team giving them high confidence in utilizing these instruments
- Skills achieved include learning common lab automation instruments, utilizing Python / statistical knowledge / learning Spotfire and data visualization
- Building Common Tendency Services on Automation Platforms to help HTS operationalize.
- Identify experiments that team members run and the common items they require
- Build a protocol that creates components to a colleague’s experiment so they can better apply their time. For example, pre-filling plates at a variable volume, skipping columns based on their requirement, or pre-barcoding and dispensing reagents that are required for different experiments.
Please note: the preferred start date for this co-op position is January 2023 (Spring co-op, 6 month term).
The Ginkgo Bioworks Early Talent program is open to students who will return to their degree programs upon completion of their employment at Ginkgo. Candidates must be enrolled in a United States based institution and/or have work authorization in the United States to be eligible to participate.
Responsibilities
- Use cutting-edge laboratory automation and software to understand, engineer, and operationalize biology
- Design and execute high-throughput screens, generate and interpret data supporting the development of new processes
- Learn about and apply new technical and scientific advances to your work, troubleshooting, data analysis, and reporting
Minimum Requirements
- You are currently enrolled in a bachelor’s degree program with interest in converging biology, robotics automation, and software to scale strain/cell engineering
- You are a current sophomore or junior at the time of application
- You are majoring in one of the following: Data Science, Bioinformatics, Computer Science and Biology double major, a science-based Engineering field, or a related STEM field. Scientists turned programmers are welcome!
- You have a willingness to learn and use various software tools and robotic instrumentation.
Preferred Capabilities and Experience
- You have experience with basic biology and wet lab techniques and automation.
- Having experience screening or developing high-throughput assays is a plus!
- You have proficiency in Python, Spotfire, GraphPad PRISM, or JMP, experience in analyzing large data sets, and a desire to learn new programming languages and software tools
- You are familiar with C#
- You have a willingness and ability to learn new things quickly and work in a fast-paced, collaborative environment
- You have a demonstrated ability to independently troubleshoot errors
We also feel that it’s important to point out the obvious here – there’s a serious lack of diversity in our industry, and that needs to change. Our goal is to help drive that change. Ginkgo is deeply committed to diversity, equity, and inclusion in all of its practices, especially when it comes to growing our team. Our culture promotes inclusion and embraces how rewarding it is to work with people from all walks of life.
We’re developing a powerful biological engineering platform, so we must remain mindful of the many ways our technology can – and will – impact people around the world. We care about how our platform is used, and having a diverse team to build it gives us the best chance that it’s something we’ll be proud of as it continues to grow. Therefore, it’s critical that we incorporate the diverse voices and visions of all those who play a role in the future of biology.
It is the policy of Ginkgo Bioworks to provide equal employment opportunities to all employees and employment applicants.