Jobs in Structural Biology and Related Fields


Beamline Scientist Position


ALBA Synchrotron Light Facility, Barcelona, Spain
Application deadline: 04 Mar 2014


ALBA is the Spanish 3-GeV synchrotron radiation facility operated by the Consortium CELLS, which is equally funded by the Spanish Government (Ministerio de Economía y Competividad) and the Catalan Government (Generalitat de Catalunya, Departament d'Economia i Coneixement). Out of the seven operating phase I beamlines, BL13-XALOC is the only Macromolecular X-ray Crystallography (MX) beamline. It is equipped with an in-vacuum undulator, high-stability optical elements and a state-of-the-art end-station instrumentation including high accuracy diffractometer with a removable mini-kappa mount, automated mounting robot and a photon-counting 6-Mpixel detector with excellent dynamic range and a negligible dark current noise. The beamline is fully tunable between 5.5 and 22 keV and delivers a Gaussian beam at the sample position with a minimum size of 57×6 µm (h×v, FWHM) and a flux exceeding 1012 phtons/s at 250mA.
 
The beamline is open to worldwide scientific community since 2012. The scientific staff of the beamline is responsible to give support to academic and industrial users, the maintainance, and the continuous upgrade of the beamline.
 
The beamline scientists are encouraged to carry on a scientific programme using the capabilities of the beamline. To this aim, a Biology laboratory close to the beamline can be used. The laboratory is prepared to perform crystallizations, and is is equipped with basic equipment such as centrifuges, crystallization incubators, fridge/freezers, one fume hood, and a large cold room at 4 ºC. Other nearby larger laboratories equipped with the required devices to perform complete structural biology projects, including crystallization robots, can be accessed through the agreements of ALBA with these institutions.
 
The successful candidate will: 
* Provide Local Contact support in Macromolecular X-ray crystallography experiments to scientific groups using XALOC.
* Develop a scientific program in structural biology that takes advantage of the capabilities of the beamline.
* Maintain the beamline and related laboratories and services, together with the technical staff. 
* Participate in projects to continuously improve and upgrade the beamline, notably regarding the end-station setup and the beamline control, together with     the corresponding engineers. Examples of ongoing projects are: the implementation of the in-situ screening of crystallization plates, the implementation of new data  collection strategies and the testing of the remote data collection, among others.