Senior Research Scientist, Pilot-Scale Research
Are you looking for an amazing workplace where you can put your skills to work while enjoying an amazing culture, where employees are happy, employees are developing, and the team is performing at super high levels? If so, please read on and apply!
Ecovative is a fast-paced dynamic company creating next generation materials through indoor mushroom cultivation. Our mission is to grow better materials in a more sustainable way. The team is using groundbreaking mushroom technology to develop and manufacture different food and materials for an assortment of commercial and industrial applications.
Come join the Ecovative team leading research at the program level to support commercialization of mycelial based biopolymers and revolutionary food ingredients. This role’s work will center on answering the critical questions to achieve commercial scale production for edible products and will also extend to Pilot R&D efforts across all product lines. Research will involve multiple sizes of in-house cultivation equipment as appropriate to the stage of development, from experiments in large lab incubators to trials in pre-commercial or even commercial mushroom farm rooms.
Exceptional candidates will be research leaders, with a highly collaborative, creative, and positive attitude. They will be intellectually curious and deeply invested in understanding fungi and controlled environment agriculture. They will have scientific discipline and data analysis and visualization skills – while also maintaining a healthy ability to take risks, experiment with the unknown, and embrace rapid advances and changes in technology and projects.
The Senior Scientist, Pilot-Scale Research will work closely with Engineers, Scientists, and Research and Development Operators on the Pilot Team in coordinating experiments and trials, and in setting the priorities for discovery and continuous improvement. They will be individual contributors and self-educators, as well as organizers and mentors. They will also be a key liaison with the Foundry research team, which is responsible for future and fundamental research projects at a benchtop scale.
Ecovative’s Senior Research Scientists are responsible for the following:
- Coordinate and execute a portfolio of research directed at refining and optimizing a competitive, reliable production system for fungal based biopolymer
- Be an individual contributor to all aspects of the pilot research portfolio, this includes: generating efficient experimental designs; performing hands-on tasks in support of own and others experimentation; completing experimental analyses appropriate to the experimental needs; writing final research reports as well as serving as peer reviewer of other reports and presenting findings both internally and externally to stakeholders
- Staying up to date with literature on a wide variety of fungal and cultivation topics
- Be a study lead or overall project lead. Contribute to overall project definition and objectives and be responsible for reporting progress and challenges and ultimately achieving objectives
- Be a go-to voice in suggesting and evaluating next steps, pipelines, and strategy for Pilot focused research and continuous process improvement, understand the business context for research strategy
- Work collaboratively with the engineering team to tighten design and operational specifications for all equipment and steps of the process based on biological responses and limitations
- Mentor, educate and train others to enable them to rise to R&D challenges and advance as Scientists; this may include facilitating career / skill development for others
- Translate vision into clear and realistic plans
Minimum Qualifications:
- Proven track record of scientific discovery and strong technical ability to synthesize data into clear hypotheses which can be deconvoluted and tested
- Ability to screen a broad range of literature and incorporate it into Ecovative’s research priorities.
- Be capable of coordinating projects with numerous scientists or technical teams within the framework of a tightly knit. highly collaborative cross functional teams operating under aggressive timelines.
- Able to make complex decisions efficiently to ensure project milestones remain on schedule, anticipates outcomes and potential pain points before execution is completed
- Demonstrated multidisciplinary approach to science. Strong ability to synthesize information from disperse scientific fields to address tough biological questions. Experience in experimental design, statistical analysis, and interpretation of data.
- Strong demonstrated capabilities with Design of Experiment, Multifactorial research, and tools of Statistical Process Control and optimization
- Excellent communication skills, team mentality, and strong self-learning abilities.
- Is a proven and trusted leader within a project team
- Willingness to be hands-on as required, or to organize and guide the work of others
- Ability and comfort with learning quickly when facing new problems; Enjoys the challenge of unfamiliar tasks. Readily implements new tools or practices, is not fearful of acting with minimum necessary planning
- High level of technical data-handling competency across multiple software platforms. Experienced at developing pipelines for data collection and analysis including sophisticated tools for analysis and visualization
Minimum Education and Competencies:
- Master’s degree within a Biological sciences related field and three (3) years work experience in mycology or commercial mushroom farming, OR Bachelor’s degree in Biology or related field with minimum five (5) years of relevant work experience in mycology or commercial mushroom farming
- Must be highly flexible, results oriented, independent self-starter who enjoys working in a fast-paced environment.
Desired skills:
- Experience in research leadership and mentoring others in biological research
- Strong understanding of the physiology of fungi.
- Mechanical aptitude
- Exceptional computer skills, especially in data manipulation, visualization and analysis
- Proven track record of technology development and/or implementation of new technologies into existing production systems.
- Flourishes in environments with a high degree of autonomy and research complexity
Ecovative is an Equal Opportunity Employer
Interested applicants must submit a resume and cover letter for consideration to jobs@ecovativedesign.com. Deadline: February 18, 2022.
