Academic Administrator
University of California Davis
United States

Application Window

The Genome Center at the University of California, Davis invites applications from qualified candidates for the position of Technical Director of the UC Davis West Coast Metabolomics Center (WCMC).

Reporting to the faculty director, the incumbent will have general responsibility for maintaining and improving services of the WCMC (https://metabolomics.ucdavis.edu/), which includes four research laboratories, a professional outreach core and large service laboratory. The Technical Director will develop, direct and oversee the daily operations of metabolomics and cheminformatics services. The service core consults clients and provides data and pathway analyses for four untargeted assays (lipidomics, biogenic amines, primary metabolites and polyphenols), and a range of targeted assays and isotope tracer studies. The Technical Director will widen the core's portfolio for academic and biomedical research through the main laboratory on the Davis campus, for example via MS-based imaging, while enhancing support for large scale clinical studies through the recently established ThermoFisher Center of Excellence in Clinical Metabolomics, located on the UC Davis clinical campus in Sacramento. The Technical Director will advance the state of metabolomics by developing and integrating new cheminformatics tools and databases as well as new methods in data acquisition and data interpretations.

Currently, core services are provided for more than 350 projects and 30,000 samples per year. The core currently employs 17.5 full time staff, has 19 mass spectrometers and 14 types of cheminformatics tools. The incumbent reports to the WCMC faculty director on budget and staff management as well as development and implementation of technical advancements or new services, and is supported by a management team consisting of a laboratory manager, an IT senior lead and a project manager.

MAJOR RESPONSIBILITIES

1) CORE MANAGEMENT (90%)

Provide high quality metabolomics services (50%)

• Consult with clients of the metabolomics service core with respect to study designs, assays, costs, turnaround, types of data, statistics and data interpretation.
• Lead core management team and overall service core staff team.
• Manage and provide high quality services for targeted and untargeted metabolomics assays as well as for special services such as isotope tracer studies and MS-based metabolomic imaging.
• Review and approve metabolomic data submission to clients. Review service bills and monthly service income, including trends on the diversity of metabolomic projects with respect to client base and types of projects.
• Operate and maintain the facility’s instrumentation: for untargeted analyses, five Agilent QTOFs, four ThermoFisher Orbital Ion traps, five Leco GC-TOFs, one Sciex TTOF and one Bruker timsTOF Pro2 flex mass spectrometers. For targeted analyses, oversee use of two ThermoFisher Altis QQQ and one Sciex QTRAP 6500+ instruments.
• Oversee sample preparation with respect to costs, speed and quality of services.
• Oversee chemical inventory, metabolomic IT infrastructure and databases, laboratory safety and staff training.
• Maintain a balanced budget and develop the fee structure to cover operational expenses for staff, consumables and instrument maintenance. Provide reports to the Faculty Director, the Genome Center director, the service core advisory board and the Campus Core administration.

Improve metabolomics services (40%)

• Evaluate new and advance existing technologies, software, workflows and equipment by collaborating with the WCMC metabolomics research laboratories and industry partners.
• Improve existing assays with respect to quality, coverage, throughput, accuracy and costs.
• Improve turnaround times of metabolomics projects from client communication to final data reports and billing, through optimizing efficiency and by better integrating informatics tools.
• Based on client input and consultation with the faculty director and the advisory board, devise, refine and implement new metabolomics assays
• Devise and implements routines, preventative maintenance schedules, monitoring charts and other measures to improve quality of metabolomic data and scientific reports.
• Work towards adopting GLP and CLIA practices in the ThermoFisher Center of Excellence in Clinical Metabolomics.

Grant Acquisition (10%)

• Advance the portfolio of metabolomics methods by applying to federal instrumentation grants and participating in WCMC grant proposals.
• Collaborate with industry partners of the WCMC with respect to testing, improving and refining metabolomics and cheminformatics methods.
• Collaborate with core clients with input in technical sections of grant writing, including drafting support letters.

2) PROFESSIONAL COMPETENCE AND ACTIVITY (5%)

• Lead metabolomics advancements by scientific contributions to journal articles, workshops, seminars and academic conferences, including ASMS and MANA societies.
• Participate in the WCMC training and outreach activities in professional metabolomics courses.
• Promote the Core’s activities on and off campus.
• Identify new clients and advocate the Core’s activities through the WCMC newsletter, Twitter account, website, YouTube channel, and conference booths, webinars, surveys.
• Coordinate metabolomics activities occurring on campus.

3) UNIVERSITY AND PUBLIC SERVICE (5%)

• Collaborate with clients to facilitate the research projects of clients.
• Engage in public outreach activities including K-12 or general public education
• Provide relevant advice to individuals and public agencies, for example in grant reviews and manuscript evaluations.
• Engage in University service activities such as guest lecturing, graduate courses and committee service.

• Ph.D. or equivalent in STEM fields of research.
• Five years of experience in mass spectrometry and quantification of small molecules.
• Strong and demonstrated communications skills.

• Demonstrated skills in team leadership.
• Experience in metabolomics.
• Experience in a scientific service core.

• 6-8 letters of reference required

UC Davis is a smoke and tobacco-free campus (http://breathefree.ucdavis.edu/).

We are an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity employer, and particularly encourage applications from members of historically underrepresented racial/ethnic groups, women, individuals’ with disabilities, veterans, LGBTQ community members, and others who demonstrate the ability to help us achieve our vision of a diverse and inclusive community. For the complete University of California nondiscrimination and affirmative action policy see: http://policy.ucop.edu/doc/4000376/NondiscrimAffirmAct

Under Federal law, the University of California may employ only individuals who are legally able to work in the United States as established by providing documents as specified in the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986. Certain UC Davis positions funded by federal contracts or sub-contracts require the selected candidate to pass an E-Verify check. More information is available at: http://www.uscis.gov/e-verify

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