Scientist, Plant Metabolic Engineering - Plant Biology Institute

EIT - Ellison Institute of Technology

Oxford, United Kingdom

Your Role:

EIT is seeking a Scientist to join the Cell Based Production programme. The successful candidate will contribute to innovative research in plant specialised metabolism engineering, within the overall programme goal of advancing plant and cell tissue culture for novel decarbonised plant-based production of food and/or medicines, taking projects from fundamental discovery through to technological development and scalable application.

The ideal candidate will have a strong background in plant specialised metabolism, with expertise in analysing metabolic pathways and products, as well as experience in engineering plant cells with state-of-the-art synthetic biology approaches.

The scientist will be expected to show awareness to IP generation and play an active role in translating research into real-world and commercial solutions aligned with EIT’s mission of humane technological advancement. This role offers a unique opportunity to conduct high-impact research at the forefront of plant science while collaborating across multidisciplinary teams to drive innovation from lab to global impact.

Your Responsibilities:

• Design and conduct research focused on understanding and engineering plant specialised metabolism in plant cell cultures to produce high-value plant natural products with applications in health and medicine in a highly collaborative environment.
• Develop and apply novel engineering and synthetic biology strategies to optimise biosynthetic pathway flux and product tolerance.
• Collaborate with EIT Oxford AI and Robotics teams to establish model-driven engineering and rapid iteration of engineering cycles.
• Drive rigorous experimental design, execution, and data interpretations, ensuring robust and reproducible scientific outcomes.
• Deliver research progress through stage gated milestones.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams to incorporate cutting edge research techniques into experiments.
• Present scientific work at seminars within EIT and at external meetings, including contributing to discussions on developments within the field.
• Recognise and act on opportunities for the creation of IP and cooperating in patent protection and in impact delivery.
• Conduct research ethically, in compliance with EIT policy, regulatory guidance, and best scientific practice.

Requirements:

Essential Skills, Qualifications & Experience:

• PhD in Biochemistry, Plant Biology, Biotechnology or other related discipline.
• Strong background in plant specialised metabolism.
• Experience in specialised metabolite analytics.
• Experience in plant metabolic engineering and synthetic biology to modify or enhance metabolic outputs.
• Proficiency in applying advanced plant biotechnology approaches to interrogate and reprogram metabolic networks.

Desirable Skills, Qualifications & Experience:

• Expertise in utilising plant cell culture systems as platforms for metabolic studies and compound production.
• Working knowledge of targeted metabolomics, including small molecule separation and mass spectrometry.
• Experience with the use of laboratory automation and robotics.
• Experience with cross-disciplinary collaboration, especially with computational modellers.
• Demonstration of commercial awareness and versatility of research that could serve a wide range of different applications (e.g. oils, pharmaceuticals, foods); Development of partnerships with engineering, technical partners and licensees/channel partners.
• Interest in mentoring members of the research group and contributing to building and maintaining a publication record.
• Recognition of the value of translation of scientific results into commercial opportunities consistent with the EIT humane endeavours.