Postdoctoral Fellow in Time-resolved and Room-temperature Crystallography
Paul Scherrer Institute, Switzerland
Application deadline: 10 Jan 2027
The Paul Scherrer Institute PSI is the largest research institute for natural and engineering sciences in Switzerland. At PSI, they conduct cutting-edge research in the fields of future technologies, energy and climate, health innovation and fundamentals of nature. Through basic and applied research, they work on sustainable solutions for central questions from society, science and the economy. Training young people is a central concern of PSI. For this reason, around a quarter of their employees are postdocs, doctoral students or apprentices. Altogether, PSI employs 2300 people.
Their group operates the three macromolecular crystallography beamlines of the Swiss Light Source SLS, recently upgraded to the fourth-generation SLS 2.0, as well as the Cristallina-MX endstation at the X-ray free-electron laser SwissFEL. In a new project, they are developing “Cryo2RT” approaches that combine the robustness of cryogenic sample preparation, shipping and beamline automation with room-temperature, multi-temperature and time-resolved crystallography, to make dynamic structural biology accessible on standard MX beamlines.
For the Macromolecular Crystallography group in the Center for Photon Science they are looking for a Postdoctoral Fellow in Time-resolved and Room-temperature Crystallography.
The role:
- You will work at the new PXI-VESPA endstation and the other SLS MX beamlines, in close collaboration with beamline scientists, detector and software experts.
- Implement and run time-resolved experiments: substrate / ligand droplet mixing with a picolitre injector and microsecond pump–probe experiments (laser-induced temperature jump, photocaged compounds) using the JUNGFRAU detector
- Apply these methods to dynamic structural enzymology to capture reaction intermediates and conformational changes
- Establish serial synchrotron crystallography SSX workflows on cryo-compatible fixed-target chips (e.g. IMISX, MISP-chip) for dynamic studies
- Characterise X-ray-induced heating and radiation damage at room temperature on micro- to millisecond time scales and derive data-collection protocols
- Publish results in peer-reviewed journals, present them at international conferences and support external users and collaborator
Applicant Requirements
- PhD degree in structural biology, biophysics, biochemistry, chemistry, physics or a related field
- Hands-on experience in macromolecular crystallography, from X-ray data collection and processing to structure determination and refinement
- Experience in serial and/or time-resolved crystallography at synchrotrons or XFELs
- Strong interest in method and instrumentation development and enjoyment of working in an interdisciplinary team at a large-scale research facility
- Very good written and spoken English
- Desirable: experience with protein production and (micro)crystallisation, reaction initiation (mixing, laser pump–probe, T-jump) or enzyme kinetics
- Desirable: programming skills (e.g. Python) and experience with serial data-processing software (e.g. CrystFEL, XDS) or radiation-damage studies
The position is limited to 2 years, with the option of a 1 year extension. Starting date: by agreement.
Find out more information and how to apply here.
Closing date: 10 January 2027.
