Postdoctoral Fellow in Time-resolved and Room-temperature Crystallography at Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI), Villigen, Switzerland

Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI), Switzerland, is hiring a Postdoctoral Fellow in Time-resolved and Room-temperature Crystallography in Villigen / Mitteland, Switzerland. Application deadline: 10 January 2027.

Job Details

Company: Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI)

Position: Postdoctoral Fellow in Time-resolved and Room-temperature Crystallography

Location: Villigen / Mitteland, Switzerland

Reference: Official careers job 75378

Group: Macromolecular Crystallography group (Center for Photon Science / Swiss Light Source SLS 2.0 and SwissFEL Cristallina-MX)

Project: Cryo2RT project, which combines cryogenic sample workflows with room-temperature and time-resolved crystallography

Duration: Position limited to two years with possible one-year extension

Career Level: Postdoctoral (early-career; Freshers eligible as recent doctorates)

Job Description

You will work at the new PXI-VESPA endstation and the other SLS MX beamlines, in close collaboration with beamline scientists, detector and software experts.

Key Responsibilities

  • Implement and run time-resolved experiments: substrate / ligand droplet mixing with a picolitre injector and microsecond pump–probe experiments (laser-induced temperature jump, photocaged compounds) using the JUNGFRAU detector
  • Apply these methods to dynamic structural enzymology to capture reaction intermediates and conformational changes
  • Establish serial synchrotron crystallography SSX workflows on cryo-compatible fixed-target chips (e.g. IMISX, MISP-chip) for dynamic studies
  • Characterise X-ray-induced heating and radiation damage at room temperature on micro- to millisecond time scales and derive data-collection protocols
  • Publish results in peer-reviewed journals, present them at international conferences and support external users and collaborators

Eligibility Criteria

  • PhD degree in structural biology, biophysics, biochemistry, chemistry, physics or a related field
  • Hands-on experience in macromolecular crystallography, from X-ray data collection and processing to structure determination and refinement
  • Experience in serial and/or time-resolved crystallography at synchrotrons or XFELs
  • Strong interest in method and instrumentation development and enjoyment of working in an interdisciplinary team at a large-scale research facility
  • Very good written and spoken English

Required Skills

  • Desirable: experience with protein production and (micro)crystallisation, reaction initiation (mixing, laser pump–probe, T-jump) or enzyme kinetics
  • Desirable: programming skills (e.g. Python) and experience with serial data-processing software (e.g. CrystFEL, XDS) or radiation-damage studies

How to Apply

Application Deadline: 10 January 2027

CTA:

CLICK HERE FOR THE ORIGINAL NOTIFICATION / APPLY ONLINE

About Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI)

The Paul Scherrer Institute PSI is the largest research institute for natural and engineering sciences in Switzerland. At PSI, cutting-edge research is conducted in the fields of future technologies, energy and climate, health innovation and fundamentals of nature.

Application deadline: 10 January 2027. Apply through the official PSI careers notice.