The BP Biofuels’ Global Technology Center, located in San Diego, California, is the central hub for R&D activities. The lignocellulosic enzyme group is responsible for developing enzyme technologies for the production of low cost, high performance enzymes for biomass conversion.
We seek an experienced scientist with a deep understanding of fungal physiology, fermentation and strain development to join our enzyme team and lead a strain evaluation group. The strain evaluation group will work in close collaboration with the enzyme and strain optimization groups to develop and improve our enzyme production technologies. The strain evaluation team will also leverage ‘omics, analytical chemistry, bioinformatics, metabolic engineering and other core technologies at BP.
Reporting Relationships:
AE Biofuels TECH LC Enzymes
Accountabilities:
- Lead an enzyme research group with a mission of evaluating and characterizing strains and fermentation technologies to demonstrate performance and identify further improvement opportunities. Provide feedback and direction to strain and enzyme optimization teams.
- Develop and execute strategies to reduce enzyme production costs in collaboration with strain development, enzyme optimization, analytical chemistry, ‘omics, bioinformatics and other groups to develop organisms and fermentation technologies
- Serve as a subject matter expert for fungal physiology and fermentation science. Responsible for and maintaining a deep scientific understanding of fungal enzyme production strains.
- Key interface for managing transition of technology to and from the process development and scale up groups
- Mentor and train junior scientist with hands on techniques and experimental approaches
- Provide scientific innovation and technical leadership.
Essential Criteria:
Biofuels Competencies:
Value Creator – Focuses their energy on the actions that will give the greatest return, showing pace, flexibility and resilience in doing so. Take appropriate risks and tries out new ways of solving problems.
Great Partner - Builds strong and enduring partnerships based upon excellence in what they do, sound decision making and strong negotiation skills
Develop Others - Gets the very best out of people in a fast paced and dynamic environment. Balances the pressure to focus on short-term development with the longer term need to develop the next generation of talent for the business
Desirable Criteria
- A minimum of 3 years of industrial or academic research and development experience.
- The successful candidate will have demonstrated outstanding inter-disciplinary problem solving and scientific analytical skills, with a strong interest in the pursuit of scientific discovery.
- Deep understanding of cellular metabolism, gene expression and regulation, stress response mechanisms, carbon flux, and how this information can be applied to engineering microorganisms for chemical production.
- Familiarity with fermentation scaleup, cellulase enzymology, metabolic pathways, systems biology, and ‘omics’ technologies is desirable
- Must be motivated, possess good interpersonal skills, communicate well within and between teams and be able to work to tight deadlines; Ability to prioritize responsibilities and multi-task effectively will be key.
- Demonstrated ability to lead interdisciplinary groups and teams toward commercially successful outcomes
- Commitment to safety in the job environment.
Education/Certifications
Ph.D. degree in Microbiology, Cell Biology, Chemical Engineering, Biochemistry, Biochemical Engineering, or other relevant discipline.
If interested please contact:
Patrick Monteforte
Contract Recruiter
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