Research Co-op, Organism Engineering (Undergraduate or Graduate)
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.
We are looking for highly talented and motivated undergraduate and graduate students actively enrolled in a bachelor's, master’s, or PhD degree program that requires an industrial internship. Students that meet this requirement can join Ginkgo’s Codebase team for 6-month appointments to contribute to our development processes, including strain design, DNA / strain construction, evaluation of strain performance, and pathway optimization and troubleshooting.
We have multiple openings across academic levels, and specific co-op projects will be tailored by academic level.
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
- Genetic designing of strains to optimize production of chemicals and enzymes
- Strain engineering to optimize production of chemicals and enzymes
- Developing suitable cultivation conditions and assays for screening the performance of your microbes
- Testing the metabolic and physiological performance of your microbes
Minimum Requirements
- Actively enrolled in a bachelor's degree program (current freshman, sophomore, or junior at time of application), or currently enrolled in a master's or PhD program
- Majoring in or pursuing studies in microbiology, biochemistry, genetics, chemical or biological engineering, or related field
Preferred Capabilities and Experience
- Prior experience with metabolic engineering of microbial organisms
- Prior demonstration of limitless enthusiasm for synthetic biology, such as undergraduate internships, co-ops or participation in iGEM, a plus
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.