Jobs in Structural Biology and Related Fields

The activities of the EM Specialist will focus on Single-particle Applications, including sample preparation by negative staining and plunge freezing, imaging by TEM and STEM at room and cryogenic temperatures on both side-entry and autoloader equipped systems, and all related applications and software (e.g. SerialEM and Thermo Scientific EPU, Tomography, Velox and MAPS).

The Cryo-EM Unit workflows span from sample preparation (i.e. negative staining, plunge freezing, high-pressure freezing, freeze substitution, chemical fixation, resin embedding, carbon coating and metal sputtering, cryo-ultramicrotomy, and micropatterning) to imaging techniques (i.e. TEM\STEM imaging at room and cryogenic temperatures on side-entry holder systems, widefield and confocal cryo-CLEM imaging, SEM imaging and FIB-milling, TEM\EF-TEM imaging at cryogenic temperatures on autoloader-equipped systems). Currently, the Cryo-EM Unit owns: a 300kV Thermo Scientific Titan Krios G4i TEM with Falcon 4i, Selectris X energy filter, and Volta phase-plate; a 200kV Thermo Scientific Glacios TEM with Falcon 4i, Selectris X energy filter, Volta phase-plate, and micro-ED package; a 300kV Thermo Scientific Spectra S/TEM with CETA 2 with speed enhancement, HAADF, BF and DF detectors; a 120kV Thermo Scientific Talos L120C TEM with Gatan Elsa cryo-holder; a Thermo Scientific Aquilos 2 DualBeam cryo-FIB system with EasyLift system, iFLM, AutoSlice-and-View and AutoTEM modules; a Leica Stellaris confocal microscope with white light laser equipped with cryo-stage for CLEM applications; all ancillary sample preparation equipment including plunge freezing devices (2 Thermo Scientific Vitrobot Mark IV, 1 Leica EM GP2 and 1 manual plunger), glow discharger units (Pelco EasyGlow, Quorum GloQube), plasma cleaners (Gatan Solarus II and Diener PICO), carbon and metal sputter coater, high-pressure freezer, automated freeze substitution device, micropatterning device and ultramicrotome for both resin-embedded and vitrified samples. Our microscopes operate with SerialEM, Thermo Scientific EPU, Tomography, EPU-D, Velox and MAPS. Computing resources for EM-related analyses software packages are also available via VMs and HPC. Expansion of the Cryo-EM Unit with more high-end microscopes and equipment is planned in 2026 with two more high-end systems (i.e. 200 and 300 kV CFEG EFTEM with DED and autoloader) for cryo-TEM.