Biomolecular NMR Specialist to AstraZeneca

Are you an enthusiastic scientist with expertise in biomolecular NMR in a drug discovery setting, looking to develop yourself with a great team of colleagues by your side? At AstraZeneca, we make a meaningful impact on patients' lives around the globe. Always committed to lifelong learning, growth and development.

This is an opportunity for a collaborative, creative and hardworking lab-based NMR spectroscopist to play an influential role in drug discovery projects at AstraZeneca. The role is based in the Biophysics team within the Mechanistic & Structural Biology (M&SB) department in Gothenburg, Sweden supporting drug discovery projects. In this position, you will be part of Discovery Sciences in AstraZeneca's BioPharmaceuticals R&D organization.

The M&SB department has leading capabilities in mechanistic biology, compound profiling, biophysics, crystallography and cryo-EM. The Biophysics team has expertise in molecular biophysical methods including NMR, SPR, DSF, ITC, HDX-MS and Single molecule approaches and is constantly developing capability in new areas. We apply biophysics in small-molecule discovery from target validation to drug candidate to ensure that the right molecules are discovered and developed.

What you will do:
Working collaboratively in drug discovery projects alongside mechanistic and structural biologists, protein scientists, biopharma bioscientists and chemists, you will develop and deploy biomolecular NMR strategies to support the development of high-quality lead compounds, including fragment based lead generation. You will design, develop, and implement NMR experiments to accelerate drug discovery programs in the areas of Cardiovascular, Renal & Metabolism and Respiratory & Immunology.

The role includes you to provide expert scientific contributions to projects, delivering high-quality NMR-derived data on protein-compound and RNA-compound interaction and ensure impact on chemistry design and mechanistic understanding. Develop and run fragment screens, and validate and characterize hits from various screens (HTS, DNA-encoded library, virtual) will also be part of your work. Additional accountabilities:

* Identify and drive improvements and innovations in NMR technologies and methodology that enhance the biophysics capability and advance drug discovery projects.
* May utilize orthogonal biophysical approaches like SPR, ITC or DSF to validate and contextualize results from NMR experiments.
* Achieve personal scientific visibility through project contributions and internal presentations; and external scientific visibility through conference presentations and authorship on peer-reviewed publications. You may also act as lead for discovery projects or supervisor of PhD students and postdocs if interested.

Essential in the role:

* Formal training and proven expertise in biomolecular NMR ideally in a drug discovery setting, with at least 5 years relevant experience (PhD, postdoc, industry).
* Expertise in setting up & running precedented NMR experiments and in developing new experiments/pulse programs and analysis scripts.
* Significant experience of deploying NMR in fragment based drug discovery.
* Substantial experience in maintaining NMR instruments and lab infrastructure.
* A track record of scientific excellence and peer-reviewed publications or patents.

Desirable in the role:

* Experience in other relevant techniques and areas (SPR, DSF, ITC).
* Experience in studying RNA structure and conformational dynamics using NMR including RNA interactions with small molecules.

Why AstraZeneca?
Be part of a dedicated Research & Development team. Fuelled by our commitment to help more patients, strengthen our pipeline and grow our area. Thrive in a place where the brightest and most curious minds seamlessly come together in our inclusive environment. By sharing and increasing our knowledge we are empowered to be the best we can be and accelerate progress.

So, what's next? If you're passionate about the possibilities of science to make a difference, you are welcome to join us!

We look forward to get to know you better and invite you to send in your application as soon as possible, but no later than 26th September, 2021.

If you would like to know more about the position or the team, please contact the hiring manager Stefan Geschwindner at stefan.geschwindner@astrazeneca.com.

Additional information:
Our Gothenburg site: https://www.astrazeneca.com/our-science/gothenburg.htm
Life in Gothenburg: https://www.movetogothenburg.com/
About BioPharmaceuticals R&D: https://www.astrazeneca.com/r-d.html