Job openings at the NCMI

[Steven Ludtke]

We would like to announce the availability of several positions at the
National Center for Macromolecular Imaging (NCMI) at Baylor College 
of Medicine, Houston, TX (http://ncmi.bcm.tmc.edu). The NCMI is 
devoted to 3D reconstructions of molecules/macromolecules using electron cryo-microscopy
and a variety of computational techniques. The Center is well 
equipped, with several high resolution electron cryomicroscopes, a
32 processor SGI supercomputer and a 32 processor linux cluster. We are 
seeking applicants with a  variety of skills for several ongoing projects.

The NCMI recently published a structure of the herpesvirus capsid
structure to ~8 angstrom resolution (Zhou et al., Science, 288:877-880, 
2000). This is an extremely large particle with computer processing 
requirements which push the capabilities of currently available 
supercomputers. We are seeking a candidate who will aggressively pursue 
the goal of improving the resolution of this reconstruction. Much 
data has already been collected, but novel approaches towards 
reconstruction may need to be devised to achieve the desired 
resolution. This is a high-impact project which offers exciting
opportunties for a motivated researcher.

The NCMI is currently designing a database for use in EM project
management. The higher resolution structures now being generated in
electron cryomicroscopy require large amounts of data. A single project
currently has on the order of 100,000 particles, collected from dozens to
hundreds of micrographs collected over many weeks or months. Book-keeping
on such large data sets is a difficult task. The database project will
assist in keeping track of the data from biochemical purification all the
way through final 3D model. We are seeking applicants for this, to work on
design and implementation of this, and related database projects at the
NCMI. 

The NCMI recently published EMAN
(http://ncmi.bcm.tmc.edu/~stevel/EMAN/doc), a complete software package
for performing 3D reconstructions using single particle processing
techniques (Ludtke  et al, J. Structural Biology 128: 82-97, 1999). This
package is under continued development, and is currently being used
in-house on nearly a dozen different projects. We are seeking applicants
both to work on software/algorithm development for EMAN, and to apply it
to real biological applications.

We are seeking several candidates at any level for these positions. The exact
nature of the position will be determined by the qualifications and
interests of the successful applicant. Applications will be accepted from
both academic postdocs and professional/scientific programmers. Some
of the skills we are looking for (in any combination) are:

EM experience (any type)
Image processing
Background in biochemistry, physics, EE or CS.
Scientific programming involving FFT's and/or wavelets
Database programming experience
Numerical Analysis
Signal Processing
Java/C++
Postgres
Unix/Linux

The NCMI is part of the Biochemistry and Molecular Biology 
department at Baylor College of Medicine (http://www.bcm.tmc.edu), 
located in the Texas  Medical Center in Houston, TX. This is one of the
largest concentrations of hospitals and bio-medical institutions in the 
world. The NCMI has several on-going collabortaions with 
computational scientists through our assoication with the W. M. Keck 
Center for Computational Biology (http://www-bioc.rice.edu/ ) and 
the Graduate Program in Structural and Computational Biology and 
Molecular Biophysics (http://www.bcm.tmc.edu/scbmb/). NCMI is also a 
partner of the NPACI of the UCSD Supercomputer Center 
(http://www.npaci.edu/). 

Interested individuals should send a CV/resume and two letters of 
reference to:

Dr. Steven Ludtke (sludtke at bcm.tmc.edu) or Dr. Wah Chiu (wah at bcm.tmc.edu) 
Biochemistry & Molecular Biology
Baylor College of Medicine
Houston, TX 77030

Feel free to email any questions you may have about the positions.

-- 
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dr. Steven Ludtke               |        Baylor College of Medicine
sludtke at bcm.tmc.edu             | National Center For Macromolecular Imaging 
stevel at alumni.caltech.edu       |            * Those who do ARE *
http://ncmi.bcm.tmc.edu/~stevel |           The converse also holds

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