Postdoctoral Fellow, Lu Lab - Immune Aging

Who We Are

Calico (Calico Life Sciences LLC) is an Alphabet-founded research and development company whose mission is to harness advanced technologies and model systems to increase our understanding of the biology that controls human aging. Calico will use that knowledge to devise interventions that enable people to lead longer and healthier lives. Calico’s highly innovative technology labs, its commitment to curiosity-driven discovery science and, with academic and industry partners, its vibrant drug-development pipeline, together create an inspiring and exciting place to catalyze and enable medical breakthroughs.

The Calico Postdoctoral Fellowship Program

We are seeking ambitious early career scientists to join us in our mission to increase our understanding of the biology that controls human aging. This is a unique opportunity for individuals to distinguish themselves in aging research, deepen scientific training, and develop research independence.

The Postdoctoral Fellowship is a fixed-term educational assignment (three years with a potential fourth year extension) with rolling start dates. Postdoctoral Fellows are fully integrated into Calico's labs and community.

The program is designed to train individuals to become independent investigators in an academic or industry setting upon successful completion of the assignment. Fellows will receive regular feedback and guidance from their mentor(s) and participate in a formal annual review process to review project progress and individual performance and provide career coaching. 

Responsibilities

• Lead Independent Research: Focus on their own project(s), which should pursue new research directions with dedicated resources for innovative and potentially high-risk/high-reward research
• Contribute to Calico’s Core Mission: Contribute to furthering an understanding of aging and age-related diseases
• Drive Scientific Progress: Execute experiments meticulously, analyze data (including computational analysis if applicable) and troubleshoot procedures as needed
• Publish Work: Generate work that is expected to be submitted for publication in a timely fashion upon completion of the assignment
• Collaborate and Communicate: Actively collaborate across Calico's diverse teams and scientific community, including presenting progress and results to diverse audiences of computational scientists, lab scientists, and engineers
• Professional Development: Engage with a community of other Postdoctoral Fellows and senior leadership through professional and career development opportunities, such as the annual Postdoc Summit, research-in-progress presentations, senior leader lunch sessions, and skill-building workshops

Position Requirements

The successful candidate will demonstrate characteristics valued across Calico's programs, including being a self-motivated team player, detail-oriented, extremely organized, and comfortable working on complex problems.

• Education: Must have recently completed a PhD degree in a relevant scientific or computational field
• Current PhD student applicants should be within 12 months of completing their PhD
• Applicants who have already graduated must have completed their PhD within the past 3 years and not have been employed as a postdoc at more than one other lab/company since graduation
• Experience: Must have made important contributions to science in their area, ideally demonstrated by having had a meaningful first author paper accepted for publication
• Technical Versatility (General): While specific technical skills are project-dependent, proficiency in core scientific methodologies, analytical skills, and quantitative problem-solving is essential
• Communication: Strong teamwork and communication skills are required
• Adaptability: Must be flexible and able to respond quickly to shifting priorities, demonstrating a "can-do" attitude
• Onsite Availability: Must be willing to work onsite five days per week

Application Requirements

The Postdoctoral Fellowship has four application components:

• Research proposal (a 1-2 page creative and original research proposal on what you’d like to investigate in the Lu Lab during your fellowship - note that project goals may evolve during the training period)
• Updated CV with a full list of publications
• Cover letter
• List of 2-3 references that we may contact, including your PhD thesis advisor and any postdoctoral advisors (if applicable)

The estimated base salary for this role is $95,000. More information on our postdoctoral fellowship program can be found here.

About the Lu Lab

T cells play a pivotal role in the adaptive immune system by distinguishing foreign pathogens from self-antigens with exceptional sensitivity. However, as humans age, this precise discrimination wanes. Aged T cells respond poorly to external threats while becoming increasingly reactive toward the body’s own tissues. Our group is dedicated to deciphering the fundamental mechanisms by which aging impairs the T cell’s function, with the ultimate goal of restoring immune precision and resilience in older populations.

A potential driver of T cell aging is age-related thymic involution, which alters thymic selection processes and compromises both the quantity and quality of new T cell production. In response to the diminished output from an involuted thymus, existing naïve T cells undergo homeostatic proliferation, and eventually develop functional exhaustion.  We are interested in decoding the intrinsic and extrinsic factors that regulate T cell aging. We envision that by modulating T cell sensitivity, we can rejuvenate T cell function, lower the incidence of autoimmunity and cancer, and extend the healthspan of older individuals.

We welcome proposals that address core questions of T cell aging. We are seeking researchers who are intellectually fearless, naturally curious, and eager to tackle complex questions through rigorous experimentation.  Ideal candidates will be collaborative team players who thrive in a multidisciplinary environment and are committed to pushing the boundaries of immunology and aging research.

Publications from the group include:

• Full Google Scholar
• Lu et al., The phosphatidylinositol-transfer protein Nir3 promotes PI(4,5)P2 replenishment in response to TCR signaling during T cell development and survival (2023) Nature Immunology