Postdoctoral Research Associate - Process Chemist, Medicines For All Institute

The Medicines for All institute (M4ALL) at Virginia Commonwealth University is dramatically improving global access to lifesaving medicines. We achieve this mission using an innovative approach to synthesizing drugs and manufacturing pharmaceuticals to enhance production worldwide by reducing costs and waste. We are looking to add postdoctoral research associates to our team as we tackle some of the world’s most critical global health challenges!

As a postdoc, you will serve as a core component of our technical team being responsible for designing and developing low-cost, scalable synthetic routes to APIs and/or their key starting materials. In a broader sense, your efforts will be crucial to reducing costs for life-saving disease treatments in low-to-middle-income countries (LMIC). In this role, you will have the opportunity to work collaboratively with a vast network of highly experienced research scientists as well as independently to deliver results in a high pace and time sensitive environment. M4ALL offers a unique training experience to develop industrially-relevant, cost-focused process chemistry skills while helping transfer processes into the marketplace that directly impact global health outcomes.

Research & Lab Duties

• Developing new platforms for other M4ALL researchers to enhance study of reactions (ex. FTIR, computational chemistry, kinetic analysis etc.)
• Displaying a commitment to a safety culture and maintaining compliance with all lab safety requirements
• Conceptualizing and assessing viability of routes utilizing low cost raw materials.
• Creating novel synthetic routes to known or in-development active pharmaceutical ingredients or their key raw materials. This lab work covers early to late stage pharmaceutical process development, such as small-scale reaction screening all the way to investigation of purity profiles at multigram scale. Particular emphasis will be placed on mechanistic exploration of chemical systems to improve reaction outcomes.
• Conducting and documenting literature review of prior activities related to target drug substances

Scientific Communications & Writing Duties

• Writing in publication quality to help prepare manuscripts for publication in various professional journals
• Documenting findings and communicating results to internal and external team members, orally and written
• Taking ownership of assigned tasks and follows through good attention to detail and thorough laboratory documentation skills
• Collaborating with colleagues across the organization to aid our paper study process. M4ALL paper studies are proposals for API route improvement that contain synthetic background, techno-economic analyses, ideas for chemical & process improvements, and project timelines for a small synthetic organic team.

Required Hiring Standards:
• Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry or related field

• Knowledge and experience in scientific literature research and analysis with a preferred library of 5 publications serving as lead or participating author
• Professional experience in the areas of process chemistry, process development and/or organic synthesis
• Medicines for All supports a diverse faculty, staff, and student environment. The candidate will demonstrate experience that shows their commitment to fostering such an environment.
• Strong organization skills with an understanding of how to generate, document, and work with large datasets.
• Experience with advanced concepts including high throughput experimentation, Design of Experiments (DOE), kinetic, thermodynamic and mechanistic investigation, and catalysis
• Hands-on experience with a wide range of analytical techniques and instrumentation such as HPLC, GC, SFC, MS, spectroscopy and other analytical instrumentation and associated software
• Ability to communicate in written and presented formats technical information in a compelling way

Preferred Hiring Standards:
• Experience with total synthesis or flow chemistry

• Previous experience working in an academic research environment
• Previous research and development experience with active pharmaceutical ingredients
• Familiarity with the principles of green chemistry
• Experience with high throughput experimentation and quantitation of reaction mixtures
• Previous experience training and mentoring lab personnel with various levels of experience

Benefits that make M4ALL & VCU a great place to work:
VCU offers a competitive package that includes an expansive array of benefits options including group health, dental, life and disability insurance, flexible reimbursement accounts, retirement plans, as well as paid time off.

Anticipated Hiring Range: $58,500 - $59,500

Through this exciting experience, you will have the opportunities to:

• Present technical information to non-technical audiences such as global health partners
• Help transfer processes into the marketplace and help with scale-up of your innovations to directly impact global health outcomes
• Publish in high-impact journals
• Learn how to lead research projects
• Work in top-of-the-line research facilities
• Transmit knowledge to others and help train the next generation of scientists
• Gain experience working with a highly experienced team of senior chemists/leadership with decades of combined academic and industrial experience