[3dem] A hypothetical job offer

[Ariel Blocker]

Dear All,
    I have a bit of an unusual ³ad² to post to this list and I therefore
thank you all in advance for reading on (and not laughing too hard in the
process!). Indeed, unlike all others ads I¹ve seen posted here before, I do
not actually yet have funding for the job I am advertising, hence it¹s
present ³hypothetical² nature. Let me explain.

    From 2006-2008 my lab, then housed in Oxford, was luckily enough to
welcome Dr. Julie L. Hodgkinson (whom I am sure many of you know). She did
some very careful MRC-funded work on the the high-resolution structure of
the Shigella flexneri T3SS needle complex, which we are just writing up now
for publication. However, in January of this year, my lab moved to Bristol
and Jools, unfortunately, could not come with us. So, we lost a very
talented image processing senior postdoc. We did however recruit Dr. Frank
P. Booy (whom perhaps even more of you know), who¹s primary strength is in
cryoEM image acquisition. We also were luckily enough to be joined here by
Dr Sarah J. Daniell, who is working next door as an independent scientist on
an MRC Career Development Fellowship, on the high-resolution structure of
the EPEC T3SS, using especially tomography approaches. We also just
recruited a very sharp, mature and motivated PhD student, Martin Cheung,
whom Frank, Sarah and myself are in the process of training in our
respective areas of biochemical/EM expertise. In addition, thanks to two
years of effort by Dr. Paul Verkade in UoB¹s Biochemistry, we now have two
newly installed and functioning FEI EMs: one Technai12 and one Technai20
(with an LaB6 tip), the latter being also equipped for tomography and single
particle cryoEM work. Finally, we feel lucky and honoured to have
established over the years a strong and enduring collaboration with Prof.
Keiichi Namba¹s group at the Graduate School for Frontier Biosciences at the
University of Osaka, Japan. It is with him that we have chosen to do all our
true high-resolution work for a number of years now and I strongly intend
for this to continue for the foreseeable future. His lab boasts two 300 KeV
helium-cooled top-entry JEOL EMs, equipped with FEGs and energy filters.
Thanks to Keiichi¹s generosity and our ability to raise UK-Japan exchanges
funding, Frank Booy has already made successful use of them in the last two
years, while we are now collaboratively examining other samples still. What
we hence do is establish/verify the quality and cryoEM suitability of our
samples at UoB and then, where necessary, ship them or make them in Osaka.
Obviously, Keiichi is also a preciously unique source of advice and
expertise on the image analysis side, since he is himself a world leader on
the study of bacterial flagella, to which T3SS are genetically,
morphologically, functionally and structurally strongly related.

    But, that still leaves me with a serious ³expertise gap² to fill in my
own laboratory presently: evidently, we still fairly desperately need to
recruit a new image analysis ³anchor person². Ideally, such a person should
be nearing the end of at least their first postdoc and have extensive
experience with IMAGIC, SPIDER, EMAN and the MRC packages etc, as applied to
(rotationally symmetric and also asymmetric) single particle as well helical
(using essentially Ed Egelman¹s IRSHR method) analysis of low-dose negative
stain and cryo EM images. They should also be willing and preferably also
enjoy (!) spending maybe 10-20% of their time maintaining our budding PC/Mac
(linux) computer cluster.  I am presently resubmitting the grant application
(to the UK Wellcome Trust) that I hope will finally fund this person.
Crucially, to increase our chances of success I would dearly like to be able
to put down a real person (and hence their CV) as a ³named researcher² for
this post. Please note, the grant would be submitted by the end of this
month and we¹d have a reply by late May 2009 so, if we were successful, the
person could start on the 1st of June 2009 at the earliest.

    If you read this far, aren¹t too taken aback by the usual nature of my
³offer², and feel that you may in fact be the person we are looking for,
please do contact me in the coming days (with the contact details of two
reference providers)! I would be absolutely delighted to hear from you and
would immediately send you our grant draft etc.

    Many thanks in advance and here¹s hoping to receive at least one or two
³serious² replies from 3DEM workers!

    Ariel Blocker.




************
Ariel J. Blocker, Ph.D.
Senior Lecturer in Microbiology
Departments of Cellular & Molecular Medicine and Biochemistry
School of Medical Sciences
University of Bristol
University Walk
Bristol  BS8 1TD
United Kingdom

Email: ariel.blocker at bristol.ac.uk
Tel office:     +44 117 3312019
Tel lab:        +44 117 3312402
Tel lab office: +44 117 3312059
Dept. fax:      +44 117 3312091
Room: E44a
Personal webpage: http://www.bristol.ac.uk/cellmolmed/staff/blocker.html
Research group webpage: to be announced shortly
************
Ariel J. Blocker, Ph.D.
Senior Lecturer in Microbiology
Departments of Cellular & Molecular Medicine and Biochemistry
School of Medical Sciences
University of Bristol
University Walk
Bristol  BS8 1TD
United Kingdom

Email: ariel.blocker at bristol.ac.uk
Tel office:     +44 117 3312019
Tel lab:        +44 117 3312402
Tel lab office: +44 117 3312059
Dept. fax:      +44 117 3312091
Room: E44a
Personal webpage: http://www.bristol.ac.uk/cellmolmed/staff/blocker.html
Research group webpage: to be announced shortly