Open-Science Structural Bioinformatics Research Assistant

Astera Institute; Emeryville (CA); On-site; USD 50,000 - 70,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Benefits summary

Job summary

The diffUSE Project at Astera Institute/Radial is building open infrastructure for dynamic structural biology, making protein conformational and ensemble data findable, validated, and reusable at scale.

The Research Assistant will support this mission by maintaining data pipelines, curating structural datasets, and running validation checks across X-ray, cryo-EM, and ensemble-derived data, working closely with Scientists and software engineers on day-to-day technical execution.

Qualifications

• BS or MS in bioinformatics, structural biology, computational biology, or related field.
• Proficiency in Python and familiarity with structural file formats (PDB, mmCIF, mtz).
• Strong organizational skills and close attention to detail in data handling.
• Comfortable working across computational and experimental teams in a research setting.
• Preferred: exposure to crystallography or cryo-EM data processing; familiarity with PDB, EMDB, or related databases.

Responsibilities

• Maintain and run bioinformatic pipelines for structural data processing, curation, and quality control.
• Support development and benchmarking of validation metrics against experimental datasets.
• Assist with data deposition, formatting, and documentation to meet community data standards.
• Help prepare datasets, figures, and summaries for publications, reports, and presentations.
• Coordinate with Scientists and engineers on routine data management tasks and troubleshooting.

Skills

Python

Data handling

Cross-disciplinary collaboration

Education

BS or MS in bioinformatics

Tools

PDB

mmCIF

mtz

Job description

The diffUSE Project at Astera Institute/Radial is building open infrastructure for dynamic structural biology, making protein conformational and ensemble data findable, validated, and reusable at scale.

The Research Assistant will support this mission by maintaining data pipelines, curating structural datasets, and running validation checks across X-ray, cryo-EM, and ensemble-derived data, working closely with Scientists and software engineers on day-to-day technical execution.