Location: Cerdanyola del Vallès (Spain)
Sector: Internet and technology
Discipline: R&DL’Associació Catalana d’Enginyeria de Telecomunicació i Tecnologies Digitals (Telecos.cat) és l'entitat que aplega els enginyers de telecomunicació i altres tecnologies digitals a Catalunya. Actualment, som més de 1.200 professionals. Telecos.cat dóna suport i potencia les carreres professionals dels titulats i titulades en aquestes enginyeries. L'objectiu fonamental de la institució és promoure l’excel·lència en l’exercici de l’enginyeria en l'àmbit de les TIC. Consulta els serveis d'orientació i promoció professional a www.telecos.cat
ALBA is the Spanish 3 GeV synchrotron radiation facility operated by the Consortium CELLS, which is equally funded by the Spanish Government (Ministerio de Economía y Competividad) and the Catalan Government (Generalitat de Catalunya, Departament d'Economia i Coneixement). Out of the eight presently operating beamlines, BL13-XALOC is the beamline for protein crystallography
On the other hand, ALBA synchrotron has been awarded with a MINECO research grant entitled 'Direct measurement of experimental phases from a single crystal using a standard x-ray crystallography beamline' and reference FIS2015-72574-EXP within the Explora call.
FUNCTION:
The successful candidate will join the FIS2015-72574-EXP research team and will participate in the experimental research activities in the field of phasing of macromolecular structures.
In 2014, about 8000 x-ray structures were deposited in the PDB. For approximately over 900 of these depositions, the determination of the structures was achieved using indirect experimental phasing methods, which rely on intensive laboratory work to introduce additional chemical modifications of the crystal lattice. The associated time and financial costs of these experiments are required, due to the fact that there are no experimental facilities available worldwide that provide a rapid and
reliable experimental setup for direct phasing, although it is theoretically possible to directly measure the required parameters using the ‘reference beam’ method.
The candidate will carry out reference beam experiments at the XALOC beamline, which includes the preparation of the samples to be crystallized, and the crystallization itself. The candidate will reorient the crystal in well-defined ways with respect to the beam and the rotation axis, and collect datasets at several positions and orientations of the crystal. The final analysis of the data and the assessment of the signal in the reflection intensities will be an integral part of the
tasks.
Beamtime will be provided by the in-house research program and/or via the CELLS-ALBA peer review system.
Qualifications:
Compulsory requirements:
The candidate should have a PhD degree in Physics, Chemistry, Biochemistry or a related field.
Key assets:
The candidate should have at least two years research experience -proven with scientific publications in peer-reviewed journals- in the field of X-ray diffraction on proteins.
Additional working experience on synchrotron radiation techniques and data processing will be highly evaluated.
Other assets:
• Experience in performing crystallographic data collections at different energies
• Experience in the (re)orientation of crystals in a diffractometer.
• Good interpersonal skills, adaptability to a multidisciplinary environment, sense of responsibility and capabilities to work within a group, as well as to work independently.
• The working language at ALBA is English. A good level of English both written and spoken is required.
Period and type of contract
'Contrato por obra y servicio' to carry out a research project described in the grant. 'Direct measurement of experimental phases from a single crystal using a standard x-ray crystallography beamline'. This contract will end on 30/April/2019 and this is the end of the associated research
grant.
Salary
Yearly gross salary: 29,450 €. The contract includes a test period of 3 months.
