Location: Libertyville,IL, USA
About Us:
Valent BioSciences LLC is a worldwide leader in the research, development, manufacturing, and commercialization of biorational products for the agriculture, public health, and forestry markets. We have more than 60 years of experience bringing biorational products to market, and our products are used in sustainable operations in 95 countries around the world. Biorational products maximize plant quality, productivity, and sustainability.
As a wholly owned subsidiary of Sumitomo Chemical, Valent BioSciences LLC operates with the Sumitomo Spirit mindset, which means to benefit both self and others, recognizing that private and public interests are one and the same. It's about contributing to society, as well as making a profit.
Description of Job: Responsible for the growth and maintenance of Valent BioSciences' diverse microbial culture collections and for development of new tools and downstream applications from the collection. This role will drive enhancements to our cell banking systems to increase throughput - enabling greater support of our growing bioreactor fermentation platform which includes automated ambr250 microscale reactors up to pilot scale architectures. This scientist will additionally characterize and maintain all new microbial leads through high throughput screening techniques as well as traditional microbiology tools such as microscopy and phenotypic analysis.
Principal Responsibilities:
+ Lead Development-
+ Identify new culture collections to leverage and screen for novel product leads in the areas of crop protection, crop enhancement and biostimulants
+ Develop and deploy high throughput screening methods to characterize and identify promising leads from large libraries
+ Culture Collection Curation
+ Enhance electronic inventory system by incorporating key metadata to drive downstream applications and migration to sample barcoding
+ Implement systems of management for primary and working cell banks and methods of automation to streamline operations
+ Support of Upstream/Downstream Processing, Formulation and Quality Control
+ Develop programs to identify and control foreign growth in production systems within the research environment and collaborate with QC leadership in Manufacturing
+ Advance our current practices of viability and spore enumeration
+ Establish best practices for promotion and maintenance of strains from R&D to Commercial Manufacturing
Desired skills/experience:
+ Track record of achievement in the use of microbial organisms to generate improved strains and processes, ideally in an industrial setting
+ Proficient in the use of microscopic analysis and advanced staining techniques to characterize diverse micro-organisms including fungi, yeast, actinomycetes as examples
+ Experience using and implementing barcoding systems for sample tracking
+ Experience using liquid handlers to automate workflows
+ Able to analyze complex problems, effectively utilizes internal multi-disciplinary experience and expertise and external resources experience to develop and execute technical programs, and able to make recommendations to executive management.
+ People management or supervisory experience is a plus.
+ Team player at the technical project team level and the executive management level to successfully collaborate with business units and functional partners.
+ Strong operational and project management skills.
+ Excellent communication, presentation and listening skills.
+ Self-starter with good organizational skills.
+ Will foster a culture of diversity and inclusion
Education:
PhD in Microbiology, Biology, Plant Pathology, Biological Engineering or other relevant degree with a minimum of 10 years' industrial experience supporting microbial cell systems.
Travel:
Some travel will be required. (