Tuesday, February 22, 2011

NMR Manager at the University of Victoria

Senior Scientific Assistant, Department of Chemistry

Posting 25311, PEA
Academic/Teaching/Lab/SG13
$59,961.00 - $67,488.00 per annum plus performance range

The Department of Chemistry is seeking an energetic and enthusiastic Senior Scientific Assistant (SSA) to manage and operate the Department’s Nuclear Magnetic Resonance facility. The SSA will ensure effective and efficient operation of this essential infrastructure for research and teaching. The Senior Scientific Assistant will also play a key role in the design and development of a new NMR laboratory. At this time the facility is equipped with four NMR instruments including Bruker 500MHz, 360MHz, and 300MHz systems for multinuclear and variable temperature work.

The SSA will be responsible for: monitoring the condition of instruments; conducting routine servicing, repair and maintenance of instruments and computers; troubleshooting more complex problems as required; consulting with faculty, staff and students to determine and recommend best NMR techniques and analytical methods to solve research problems, including both routine and specialized non-routine measurements;This could require the implementation and optimization of new experiments, as they appear in the NMR literature.” providing personal one-on-one training, instruction and scientific recommendations to all users of the facility (some of this training could be provided through assisting with the NMR spectroscopy component of a graduate level course); providing oversight and consultation with these users as their projects progress; overseeing installations of and non-routine repairs and modifications to the NMR equipment; procuring all supporting equipment, computers, parts, and services required for the efficient and effective operation of the facility as a state-of-the art research and educational service; planning and designing, within budget constraints, a new NMR laboratory; recommending services and equipment for this space; advising on purchases of new and replacement instrumentation, and assisting in grant preparation to secure funds for such purchases; assisting occasional users of the facility by acquiring data and consulting with them to determine if any non-routine procedures are required; updating and developing policies and procedures related to NMR services such as service charges, booking systems, safety procedures, and standard operating procedures; maintaining statistics for the time allotment for all facility users on all of the NMR equipment to facilitate the most time-efficient, productive and fair use of equipment; keeping up on advances in the field by attending relevant seminars, training courses and symposia; other duties of similar scope and complexity.

The successful candidate will have an MSc or PhD in chemistry or a closely related discipline; or an equivalent combination of education and experience. A strong background in NMR is essential. Managerial experience and excellent communication skills are essential. Teaching experience is an asset.

The successful candidate will be a highly creative, flexible individual with the ability to improve and adapt methods and procedures in response to changing user demands; and will be an individual with vision who will continually work towards improving services for our instructors, students and researchers.

This posting is open until 4:30 pm, March 11, 2011

Please log in here if you are interested in this position. Please note that we cannot accept paper applications.

https://uhire.uvic.ca/cgi-bin/WebObjects/uhire.woa/wa/vacancy?id=17311

Find out more about Chemistry

http://www.chemistry.uvic.ca/

Position #: 998474
NOC code: 4122

Thursday, February 17, 2011

Recognition: David Bryce

David Bryce has been awarded the 2011 Young Researcher of the Year Award presented by the University of Ottawa. The Young Researcher of the Year Awards are presented annually to two University of Ottawa faculty members who have made exceptional contributions to research and training students. Each award is accompanied by a $10,000 research grant.

From the citation: "David Bryce is an assistant professor in the Department of Chemistry. He received the award in the pure and applied science category for his contributions in the field of nuclear magnetic resonance. He has already established himself as a leader on the international scene within his field. His research focuses on nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy, specifically, solid-state NMR and quantum mechanical calculations of NMR parameters."

Read the announcement at
http://www.media.uottawa.ca/mediaroom/news-details_2239.html

The Human Serum Metabolome

N. Psychogios, D.D. Hau, J. Peng, A.C. Guo, R. Mandal, S. Bouatra, I. Sinelnikov, R. Krishnamurthy, R. Eisner, B. Gautam, N. Young, J. Xia, C. Knox, E. Dong, P. Huang, Z. Hollander, T.L. Pedersen, S.R. Smith, F. Bamforth, R. Greiner, B. McManus, J.W. Newman, T. Goodfriend, D.S. Wishart, "The Human Serum Metabolome," PLoS ONE 6 (2011) e16957. (open access article) http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0016957

Abstract: Continuing improvements in analytical technology along with an increased interest in performing comprehensive, quantitative metabolic profiling, is leading to increased interest pressures within the metabolomics community to develop centralized metabolite reference resources for certain clinically important biofluids, such as cerebrospinal fluid, urine and blood. As part of an ongoing effort to systematically characterize the human metabolome through the Human Metabolome Project, we have undertaken the task of characterizing the human serum metabolome. In doing so, we have combined targeted and non-targeted NMR, GC-MS and LC-MS methods with computer-aided literature mining to identify and quantify a comprehensive, if not absolutely complete, set of metabolites commonly detected and quantified (with today’s technology) in the human serum metabolome. Our use of multiple metabolomics platforms and technologies allowed us to substantially enhance the level of metabolome coverage while critically assessing the relative strengths and weaknesses of these platforms or technologies. Tables containing the complete set of 4229 confirmed and highly probable human serum compounds, their concentrations, related literature references and links to their known disease associations are freely available at http://www.serummetabolome.ca/

Friday, February 11, 2011

"Canadian NMR Research" News Bulletin

The Winter 2011 Issue of the "Canadian NMR Research" news bulletin is now available for download. You are welcome to share it with your colleagues and students. Thanks for reading!
http://nmr900.ca/nmr_bulletin.html

Thursday, February 10, 2011

NMR paper in Nature Structural & Molecular Biology

L.A. Freiburger, O.M. Baettig, T. Sprules, A.M. Berghuis, K. Auclair, A.K. Mittermaier, "Competing allosteric mechanisms modulate substrate binding in a dimeric enzyme," Nature Structural & Molecular Biology (2011) online. http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nsmb.1978

Friday, February 4, 2011

ICSG 2011: Workshop on NMR Methods for Structural Biology

In conjunction with the International Conference on Structural Genomics 2011, Toronto, Canada

We are pleased to announce the Workshop on NMR Methods for Structural Biology at the International Conference on Structural Genomics 2011 in Toronto. This workshop is organized by Gaetano Montelione (Rutgers), Thomas Szyperski (State University of New York) and John Markley (University of Wisconsin) and will take place on Tuesday May 10, 2011 at the University of Toronto.

This workshop will survey technologies for structure/function investigations of proteins, developed in (or in collaboration with) structural genomics projects, that are ready for widespread use by the wider biological community. Topics will include: protein production and labeling by cell-based and cell-free approaches; automated assignment and secondary structure determination; reduced dimensionality approaches to NMR data collection; NMR structure validation; and, tools for data deposition, visualization, and querying from the BMRB and PDB.

Registration for the workshop is free to registered ICSG 2011 participants. Please visit http://www.icsg2011.org for ICSG 2011 meeting and workshop registration details.

Thursday, February 3, 2011