Lab Ops Manager - Translational Health Research

Morehouse School of Medicine; Atlanta (GA); On-site; USD 54,000 - 66,000; Full time

Job summary

Morehouse School of Medicine in Atlanta, GA seeks a Laboratory Manager to oversee day-to-day operations of a translational maternal-child health, immunology, infectious disease, and placental biology research lab. You will coordinate workflows, supervise staff, manage biospecimens, and ensure safety, quality, and compliance across projects.

The role emphasizes molecular, cellular, and immunologic assays, protocol development, training, and collaboration with investigators and clinical teams.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree required; experience may be substituted on a 2:1 ratio (2 years of experience for each year of education).
• Minimum 5 years of hands-on laboratory research experience in biomedical, translational, immunology, infectious disease, maternal-child health, or related research.
• Advanced degree in biomedical sciences or related field highly preferred.

Responsibilities

• Oversee daily laboratory operations to ensure organization, safety, efficiency, and continuity across multiple research projects.
• Coordinate laboratory schedules, experimental workflows, sample processing timelines, and staff assignments.
• Maintain laboratory inventory, including reagents, consumables, equipment, and supplies.
• Coordinate procurement, ordering, receiving, and tracking of laboratory materials.
• Maintain laboratory equipment and coordinate service, calibration, repair, and preventive maintenance as needed.
• Support budget tracking related to laboratory supplies, equipment, core services, and project-specific laboratory expenses.
• Ensure that laboratory space, equipment, and supplies are maintained in a clean, safe, and organized manner.
• Oversee processing, aliquoting, labeling, storage, and tracking of human biospecimens.
• Maintain accurate biospecimen inventories and sample tracking databases.
• Coordinate specimen transfer, shipment, and receipt with clinical research teams, collaborators, institutional cores, and external vendors.
• Ensure proper storage conditions, chain-of-custody documentation, freezer organization, and sample integrity.
• Train laboratory staff, postdoctoral fellows, graduate students, undergraduate students, and research trainees in laboratory techniques, specimen processing, safety procedures, documentation, and quality control.
• Develop, revise, and maintain standard operating procedures for laboratory workflows, sample processing, molecular assays, cell culture, data documentation, and safety practices.
• Provide technical guidance and troubleshooting support to research team members.
• Promote reproducibility, rigor, and consistency across experimental workflows.
• Support onboarding and orientation of new laboratory personnel.
• Support and perform laboratory assays relevant to maternal-child health, placental biology, immunology, and infectious disease research.
• Maintain detailed experimental records and ensure accurate documentation of protocols, sample identifiers, assay conditions, and results.
• Coordinate laboratory workflows that support clinical and translational research studies involving pregnant, postpartum, infant, pediatric, or community-based populations.
• Work collaboratively with clinical research coordinators and study teams to align specimen collection, processing, and storage procedures with study protocols.
• Assist with tracking project milestones, laboratory deliverables, sample availability, assay completion, and data readiness.
• Ensure compliance with institutional biosafety policies, laboratory safety requirements, human subjects research protocols, IRB-related procedures, and applicable regulations.
• Maintain laboratory safety documentation, training records, SOPs, equipment records, reagent logs, and biospecimen documentation.
• Ensure proper use of PPE, biosafety cabinets, chemical storage, waste disposal, and biospecimen handling procedures.
• Maintain organized records of laboratory experiments, assay results, biospecimen inventories, and project-specific datasets.
• Assist with preparation of data summaries, figures, tables, reports, grant progress updates, abstracts, presentations, and manuscripts.
• Serve as a key point of contact for laboratory operations and coordination across research team members.
• Promote collaboration across maternal-child health, immunology, infectious disease, vaccine, placental biology, and health disparities programs.
• Commitment to rigorous, reproducible, ethical, and high-quality research.
• Strong knowledge of laboratory operations, research workflows, and biospecimen management.
• Experience processing and managing human biospecimens, including blood, placenta, cord blood, PBMCs, CBMCs, plasma, serum, and tissue.
• Proficiency in molecular and immunologic laboratory techniques.
• Familiarity with sequencing-related sample preparation, transcriptomics, epigenomics, single-cell, spatial transcriptomics, or other omics workflows.
• Strong understanding of biosafety procedures, laboratory safety practices, and institutional compliance requirements.
• Ability to develop, implement, and maintain SOPs and quality control procedures.
• Ability to train and supervise students, trainees, and laboratory personnel.
• Strong organizational skills and attention to detail.
• Ability to manage multiple projects, timelines, priorities, and laboratory workflows simultaneously.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills.
• Ability to troubleshoot technical problems and improve laboratory processes.
• Ability to work independently while also contributing to a team.
• Commitment to ethical, rigorous research.

Skills

Laboratory operations

Biospecimen management

Molecular techniques

Team supervision

Education

Bachelor’s degree

Job description

Morehouse School of Medicine in Atlanta, GA seeks a Laboratory Manager to oversee day-to-day operations of a translational maternal-child health, immunology, infectious disease, and placental biology research lab. You will coordinate workflows, supervise staff, manage biospecimens, and ensure safety, quality, and compliance across projects.

The role emphasizes molecular, cellular, and immunologic assays, protocol development, training, and collaboration with investigators and clinical teams.