Principal Research Scientist I, Protein Crystallography

The Protein Crystallography Group at AbbVie Headquarters in Lake County, Illinois is seeking a highly motivated scientist to join our Structure-Based Drug Discovery team. The ideal candidate should have extensive hands-on experience in modern X-ray Crystallography techniques with experience in cryoEM and computational methods of molecular structure analysis. As part of multidisciplinary teams, the Scientist will utilize fragment-based strategies to identify ligands and provide insight to advance drug discovery targets through structure-based design. The successful candidate will contribute to drug discovery projects across the portfolio of AbbVie interests that also include therapeutic antibodies and novel biologics.

Key Responsibilities:

• Determine X-ray crystal structures of protein-ligand complexes in high throughput modes and identify strategies for improved molecular designs.
• Advancing CryoEM structure pipeline
• Provide guidance to crystallization and protein construct design efforts for useful sample preparations
• Utilize cheminformatics tools and manipulate scripts for use across mixed computing platforms
• Interact with members of Fragment-based Drug Discovery team to advance hit to lead projects
• Work with biologists, molecular modelers, and medicinal chemists to validate targets of interest
• Maintain accurate and timely records of experimental results
• Communicate results and interpretative analysis to project teams, and present at internal meetings
• Publish in peer-reviewed journals as appropriate and present at external scientific meetings
• Evaluate the scientific literature critically and adopt novel technologies which will facilitate structure-based drug discovery at AbbVie

Qualifications

• PhD in Chemistry, Biochemistry, Biophysics, or a related field
• 6+ years of relevant academic or industry experience is required
• Proven ability in protein crystallization and crystal structure analysis with X-ray and CryoEM data
• Familiarity with structure-based drug design strategies and fragment based approaches
• Must be detail oriented and meticulous regarding documentation and data management
• Ability to work both independently and as part of a highly collaborative, interdisciplinary team
• Effective written and verbal communication skills
• Ability to work on multiple projects in parallel and rapidly adjust to changing priorities

AbbVie is an equal opportunity employer including disability/vets. It is AbbVie’s policy to employ qualified persons of the greatest ability without discrimination against any employee or applicant for employment because of race, color, religion, national origin, age, sex (including pregnancy), physical or mental disability, medical condition, genetic information, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, marital status, status as a disabled veteran, recently separated veteran, Armed Forces service medal veteran or active duty wartime or campaign badge veteran or a person’s relationship or association with a protected veteran, including spouses and other family members, or any other protected group status. We will take affirmative action to employ and advance in employment qualified minorities, women, individuals with a disability, disabled veterans, recently separated veterans, Armed Forces service medal veterans or active-duty wartime or campaign badge veterans. The Affirmative Action Plan is available for viewing in the Human Resources office during regular business hours.