Responsibilities:
- Position will help support molecular and applied plant pathology assays.
- Applicants will be extracting DNA from various plant, fungal and nematode tissues, processing DNA samples, verifying DNA quality and quantity, running quantitative PCR experiments, and perform other various tasks for different molecular assay workflows.
- Applicant not expected to design own experiments but will be following a protocol and work closely with Scientist.
- Position will support the chemical screening of fungicides on several plant species that include wheat, soy, corn, and model testing systems.
- Plants are evaluated by applying plant diseases and assessing leaf or seedling disease severity.
- Applicants will be maintaining experiments within growth chambers including cleaning and maintenance of area. Work will focus on plant care; planting, watering, chemical and disease application, rating of plant diseases, and data collection.
- In addition, this group maintains many plant pathogen subcultures for various assays/groups.
- Other opportunities in plant pathology screening of nematodes may also be obtained.
- Field work may also be required.
Required skills:
- Bachelor's degree and 3-6 years of experience in the field or in a related area.
- Experience working with micropipettes, PCR, plants, landscaping or nursery experience, aseptic/sterile technique working in laminar flow or bio-control hoods, and must be comfortable wearing N95 respirators.
- Applicant must have experience with common computer software; e.g. MS Office suite.
- If the applicant has some coursework or work experience in microbiology techniques, fungal or nematode plant pathology, chemical handling/spraying, and database/analysis software experience is a plus but not required