Postdoctoral Research Associate I

The Postdoc will track the fate of VOC carbon soil incubations in the laboratory and plant rhizospheres in growth chambers. The Postdoc scholar will operate a real time VOC sensor (proton-transfer-reaction time-of-flight mass-spectrometer, PTR-ToF-MS) and analyze resulting data alongside genomic and metabolom.

Outstanding UA benefits include health, dental, vision, and life insurance; paid vacation, sick leave, and holidays; UA/ASU/NAU tuition reduction for the employee and qualified family members; access to UA recreation and cultural activities; and more!

• Participate in PTR-ToF-MS calibration, maintenance, and preparing and running samples, as well as collecting and processing data on plant, soil, and microbial volatile emissions and uptake and environmental variables.
• Separating the roles of VOCs vs other substrates with innovative experimental and technical approaches including soil probes that non-destructively quantify in situ soil VOC consumption and production, online soil/root measurement systems.
• Determine how root VOC emissions and plant photosynthetic and VOC traits and environmental responses influence soil VOC-C stabilization using greenhouse growth chambers.
• Learn and apply integrative multi-omic approaches to investigate the biotic and abiotic roles in VOC transformations belowground.

Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities (KSAs)

• Knowledge of microbial and/or photosynthetic volatile organic compound cycling.
• Knowledge of mass spectrometry principles.
• Skills in trace gas measurements including constructing and troubleshooting custom measurement systems.
• Skills in data analysis including scientific programming.
• Ability to communicate professionally and work in interdisciplinary teams.

• PhD in related science field with sufficient technical research experience with demonstrated scientific accomplishments including publication of research results in peer-reviewed journals.
• Experience with advanced analytical instrumentation including, for example, mass spectrometry-based volatile emissions, microbiology techniques as well as plant physiology.
• Experience with methods in microbiology, volatile organic compounds, and biochem.