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UTHealth Houston · 1 day ago

Postdoctoral Research Fellow - Translational Psychiatry

Houston, TX

Full-time

Onsite

Senior Level

UTHealth Houston is Texas’ resource for healthcare education, innovation, scientific discovery, and excellence in patient care. The Postdoctoral Research Fellow will support a translational neuroscience laboratory investigating mechanisms linking Alzheimer’s disease and other conditions, working with animal models and human clinical samples while employing a variety of molecular and behavioral techniques.

EducationHealth CareProfessional Services

H1B Sponsor Likely

Responsibilities

Plans and conducts experiments, analyzes data, and prepares publications describing results

Assists in training and mentoring of lab personnel, including graduate students and other trainees

Reads and evaluates literature

Possess interpersonal skills to effectively collaborate and communicate with individuals at all levels

Have strong written and oral communication skills

Perform rodent handling, habituation, health monitoring, and husbandry tasks following IACUC guidelines

Conduct Cecal Ligation and Puncture (CLP) surgery to model sepsis, including pre-operative and post-operative care, analgesia, fluid therapy, and survival monitoring

Assist with transponder implantation, antibiotic treatment, fluid resuscitation, and humane endpoint evaluation

Perform euthanasia, perfusion, and careful dissection of brain, CSF, blood, spleen, liver, lung, and gastrointestinal tissues

Conduct behavioral testing using Any-maze video tracking software, including: Open Field Test (locomotion/anxiety), Y-Maze (working memory), Novel Object Recognition, Contextual & Cued Fear Conditioning, SHIRPA neurological battery

Analyze behavioral outcomes, perform data cleaning, and generate tracking heat maps and statistical outputs

Receive, log, and process human biological samples, including plasma, serum, CSF, PBMCs, saliva, and stool from clinical collaborators

Perform centrifugation, aliquoting, cryopreservation, and biobanking following established SOPs and biosafety guidelines

Assist in clinical database management and maintain strict tracking of participant metadata, sample IDs, and storage locations

Prepare tissue homogenates for ELISA, Western blot, qPCR, multiplex cytokine/chemokine profiling, and biochemical marker analysis (e.g., GFAP, NfL, Aβ, pTau)

Isolate extracellular vesicles (EVs) using ultracentrifugation, differential centrifugation, or size-exclusion chromatography (IZON qEV columns)

Performs other duties as assigned

Qualification

Immunofluorescence (IF)Immunohistochemistry (IHC)Confocal imagingData analysisRodent behavioral tasksAnimal modelsClinical sample processingMolecular assaysWritten communicationOral communicationInterpersonal skills

Required

Doctoral/Terminal Degree

Strong technical skills, including immunofluorescence (IF), immunohistochemistry (IHC), confocal imaging, and quantitative analysis of tissue sections

Ability to perform rodent behavioral tasks using the Any-maze tracking system (e.g., open field, Y-maze, fear conditioning)

Active participation in the CLP sepsis procedure and related in vivo work

Ability to analyze data using GraphPad Prism and other standard analytical software

Possess interpersonal skills to effectively collaborate and communicate with individuals at all levels

Strong written and oral communication skills