POSTDOCTORAL ASSOCIATE

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Postdoctoral Associate – Translational Microbiome and Critical Care Research

The Duke Anesthesiology Microbiome Profiling (AMP) Laboratory (https://anesthesiology.duke.edu/research/serbanescu-lab) under Dr. Mara Serbanescu in the Department of Anesthesiology at Duke University School of Medicine is seeking a full-time Postdoctoral Associate to support clinical and translational research focused on the role of the microbiome and host immune responses in critical illness.

Our research focuses on how the microbiota living on and in our bodies impact immune responses and contribute to acute and longer-term outcomes in sepsis and other critical care syndromes. The successful postdoctoral candidate will play a central role in the ongoing Microbiome and Immune Correlates of Outcomes in the Intensive Care Unit (MICRO-ICU) study, a prospective longitudinal study enrolling a heterogeneous cohort of critically ill patients (sepsis and non-septic critically ill patients including perioperative liver transplantation candidates) and healthy controls, funded by a NIH NIGMS ESI-MIRA (R35) (https://anesthesiology.duke.edu/news/nih-grant-awarded-explore-microbial-influence-sepsis).

This position is ideal for a highly organized, motivated individual who is interested in gaining experience in clinical and translational research. The majority of the role involves hands-on clinical research operations: screening and obtaining informed consent; collecting and processing biospecimens; and assisting with clinical data entry. Because communication with patients, families, and clinical care teams is central to many of these activities, the ability to build trust quickly, explain the purpose and value of research clearly, and navigate sensitive conversations with compassion is essential to success in this position. The role also offers opportunities to contribute to data analysis, manuscripts, presentations at local and national conferences, and grant applications, all of which are built in and expected to grow over time.

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Key Responsibilities

The Postdoctoral Associate will work closely with the Principal Investigator (Dr. Serbanescu), the study coordinator, research staff, and collaborating physician-scientists to support MICRO-ICU and related translational studies.

Primary responsibilities will include:

· Screening ICU patients for study eligibility using the EPIC electronic medical record and communication with clinical teams.

· Approaching patients and/or legally authorized representatives for study consent.

· Coordinating and performing longitudinal biospecimen collection, including blood, rectal swabs, oral swabs, urine, stool when available, and other protocol-specified samples.

· Performing light sample processing, labeling, documentation, storage, and handoff of human biospecimens for downstream microbiome, immune, biomarker, and metabolomic assays.

· Maintaining accurate study documentation, including REDCap/clinical databases, and assisting with clinical data abstraction from the EPIC electronic medical record.

· Supporting protocol updates, SOP development, and other research operations as needed.

· Participating in laboratory meetings and study team meetings.

· Contributing to data summaries, basic statistical analyses, abstracts, presentations at local/national conferences, manuscripts, and grant-related materials, depending on experience and interest.

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Required Qualifications

· PhD, MD, DO, PharmD, DVM, or equivalent doctoral degree in a relevant field, including but not limited to medicine, public health/epidemiology, biomedical sciences, nursing, pharmacy, microbiology, immunology or a related discipline.

· Strong interest in clinical or translational research.

· Willingness to participate directly in patient-facing research activities, including screening, consent, and biospecimen collection from critically ill patients in accordance with institutional biosafety, infection prevention, and human subjects research policies.

· Strong interpersonal skills and comfort initiating conversations with patients and families in high-acuity, emotionally charged clinical settings.

· Excellent organizational skills and attention to detail.

· Comfort working in a hospital, operating room, and ICU environment.

· Ability to work independently while also collaborating effectively with a multidisciplinary team.

· Ability to manage multiple study tasks, time-sensitive sample collections, and detailed documentation.

Preferred Qualifications

· Prior experience with human subjects research, clinical research coordination, or patient-facing research.

· Experience with electronic medical records, clinical data abstraction, biospecimen collection and/or tracking.

· Prior experience with infectious disease, microbiome, immunology, or transplant research.

· Interest in contributing to analysis or scientific writing, including abstracts, manuscripts, and grant applications.

· Familiarity with statistical analysis in R, GraphPad Prism, or similar platforms.

Research Environment

The Duke AMP (Serbanescu) Laboratory is a translational research group within Duke Anesthesiology focused on microbiome–immune interactions in critically ill and perioperative patients. Our research combines prospective ICU cohort studies; advanced microbiome sequencing techniques to study communities in the gut, blood and other bodysites; immune profiling; biomarker assays; metabolomics; clinical outcomes research; and systems-based biology and computational multi-omics approaches.

The successful candidate will gain experience in:

· ICU-based clinical research operations.

· Longitudinal biospecimen collection and biobanking.

· Microbiome and host-response translational study design.

· Clinical data abstraction and integration with biological datasets.

· Manuscript and abstract preparation.

· Multidisciplinary collaboration across anesthesiology, critical care, surgery, microbiology, immunology, genomics, and biostatistics.

The postdoctoral associate will meet weekly with the Principal Investigator (PI) to discuss study progress, troubleshoot challenges, and identify opportunities for scholarly development. Mentorship is a priority in our lab and we are committed to supporting each trainee’s growth—whether their career path leads to academic research, clinical research operations, physician-scientist training, or related fields. The role is designed to build skills progressively, with increasing opportunities to contribute to analysis, writing, and study design over time. We envision that this position is particularly well suited for an individual who is considering a future career in medicine/surgery, clinical research, translational science, academic research operations, microbiome research, or physician-scientist support roles.

Position Structure

This is a full-time position; the contract is annual with the option to renew. Because MICRO-ICU is an active prospective clinical study, the position requires substantial in-person availability at Duke University Hospital for patient screening, enrollment, consent, and biospecimen collection, which typically occur three to four days per week. Remaining time is dedicated to study operations, data management, follow-up activities, and scholarly work. Some flexibility in scheduling may be needed to accommodate ICU and intra-operative enrollment windows and protocol-specified sampling time points.