Our mission is to make biology easier to engineer. Ginkgo is constructing, editing, and redesigning the living world in order to answer the globe’s growing challenges in health, energy, food, materials, and more. Our bioengineers make use of an in-house automated foundry for designing and building new organisms.
The Design Team supports Ginkgo’s organism engineering programs by helping to design, test and analyze new strains, molecules and constructs. As a part of Ginkgo’s Foundry we provide computational biology expertise to diverse projects, and work to expand Ginkgo’s genetic engineering platform with the development of novel computational tools, using statistical and machine-learning based approaches to develop world-changing methods for engineering biology.
As a Quantitative Cellular Genetics Design Co-op, you will contribute to the Design team’s work to iteratively analyze and design quantitative experiments in cellular trait genetics. From day-to-day you will work with Designers and other engineers and scientists in our efforts to make biology easier to engineer. The specific details of what you might do will depend on your level of education, inclinations and interests, but it will be related to some of the most exciting and important problems in industrial synthetic biology engineering.
Possible projects include:
- Determination of the detection limit and propagation of error for a noisy dataset using statistical analysis tools (e.g. RNA, protein, or metabolite distributions).
- Making an interactive data tool for a team of scientists to easily analyze the results of their experiment.
- Making a machine learning model which compresses the complexity of the results of an experiment to a few intuitive parameters or dimensions.
- Recommending an experimental design based on your analysis of a dataset.
The Ginkgo Bioworks Early Talent program is open to students who will return to their degree programs upon completion of their employment at Ginkgo. Candidates must be enrolled in a United States based institution and/or have work authorization in the United States to be eligible to participate.
Responsibilities
- Develop pipelines to analyze large experiments.
- Design incisive followup experiments based on your analyses.
- Coordinate with engineers and scientists at Ginkgo to understand their needs and how your analyses will contribute to the company ecosystem.
- Deliver a report or software package that summarizes and encapsulates your efforts.
Minimum Requirements
- Currently enrolled in a bachelor’s degree program (current junior at time of application, or current senior who is enrolled in a master’s degree program), or currently enrolled in a master’s degree or PhD degree program.
- Currently studying in a major or academic concentration in Biology, Computer Science, Data Science, Engineering, or a related science field.
- Must have demonstrated understanding of biology through academic coursework or previous projects (please include this information on your resume).
- Strong verbal and written interpersonal skills
- Strong organizational skills with high attention to detail
- Made use of at least one major programming language, e.g. R, Python, C#, C/C++, or Java, including best practices for developing and maintaining the code base
Preferred Capabilities and Experience
- Prior demonstration of limitless enthusiasm for synthetic biology, such as internships, co-ops or participation in iGEM, a plus
- Desire to work on fast-paced projects and contribute to Ginkgo’s mission to make biology easier to engineer
- Prior wet lab experience such as cell culture, cell characterization or microbiology
We also feel that it’s important to point out the obvious here – there’s a serious lack of diversity in our industry, and that needs to change. Our goal is to help drive that change. Ginkgo is deeply committed to diversity, equity, and inclusion in all of its practices, especially when it comes to growing our team. Our culture promotes inclusion and embraces how rewarding it is to work with people from all walks of life.
We’re developing a powerful biological engineering platform, so we must remain mindful of the many ways our technology can – and will – impact people around the world. We care about how our platform is used, and having a diverse team to build it gives us the best chance that it’s something we’ll be proud of as it continues to grow. Therefore, it’s critical that we incorporate the diverse voices and visions of all those who play a role in the future of biology.
It is the policy of Ginkgo Bioworks to provide equal employment opportunities to all employees and employment applicants.
