Postdoctoral Fellow (Peters)

Postdoctoral Fellowship: Systems immunology of immune responses to B. Pertussis (VD-Peters)

The Peters lab at the La Jolla Institute for Immunology (LJI) is looking for an experimental immunologist to join our NIH-funded efforts in profiling immune system responses to B. Pertussis following infection or vaccination. Qualified applicants will have multiple opportunities to collaborate with our interdisciplinary team of experimental and computational scientists working towards understanding, preventing, and curing infectious diseases. The Postdoctoral Fellowship position is expected to be filled by candidates holding a PhD degree looking for advanced training positions, and will typically be for a period of 2-5 years.

Background: In the mid-1990s, concerns over vaccine-related side effects prompted the widespread replacement of the whole-cell Pertussis (wP) vaccine in favor of a safer acellular Pertussis (aP) vaccine. Recent years witnessed a worldwide reemergence of Pertussis (whooping cough) despite widespread vaccination, which has been linked to waning immunity associated with the aP vaccine. 

Our approach is to compare the immune responses to booster vaccination using systems immunology in individuals born before 1995 and vaccinated in infancy with wP, with individuals born in 1996 or later and vaccinated with aP in infancy, thus directly studying the population and age group in which the increased disease incidence is noted. This project provides an exceptional opportunity for the candidate to learn state-of-the art experimental techniques and to gain critical skills in bioinformatic analysis and biological interpretation of big datasets. Our long-term goal is to identify the cascade of immune events following Pertussis booster vaccination, characterize differences tied to the vaccine used for infancy priming (aP vs wP), and to identify correlates of long-lasting vaccine-induced immunity.

Qualifications: Candidates should have experience (or a track record of picking up new skills quickly) in: handling human samples, high dimensional flow cytometry, transcriptomics, proteomics, and characterizing antigen-specific T cell and B cell responses. Experience in the bioinformatic analysis of large scale datasets is a plus. 

How to apply: Interested candidates must include a cover letter describing why they are interested in this position. Applications without a cover letter included will not be reviewed.

About La Jolla Institute for Immunology (LJI):

LJI hosts 22 world-renowned faculty and over 70 postdoctoral researchers hailing from over 30 different countries. LJI is located in the Science Research Park on the campus of UC San Diego, with easy access to the San Diego life sciences community and all that the area has to offer, and was ranked as one of the best places to work in San Diego by the San Diego Business Journal.