Ph.D. in chemistry, biochemistry, electrochemistry, or a closely related field

Considerable hands-on experience in molecular biology, protein purification and handling, and simple analyses such as UV/visible spectrophotometry

n/a

Professor Anne-Frances Miller is seeking a post-doctoral scholar to assist with DOE and NSF-funded research in the Department of Chemistry (https://chem.as.uky.edu/) in the College of Arts & Sciences at the University of Kentucky in Lexington, KY. The period of this assignment is one year, beginning as early as October 2022, however, we envision extending the position upon satisfactory performance toward the program goals of the appointment, the availability of funding, and mutual agreement among parties.

The project focuses on electron transferring flavoproteins that mediate electron bifurcation, a recently described mode of energy conservation. We seek to understand how the protein’s interactions with its bound flavins cause them to conduct very different, complementary reactivities. The system also employs a large conformational change to gate electron transfer, which we wish to elucidate. Our long-term goal is to advance new materials for solar energy capture and storage.

Candidates must have a Ph.D. in chemistry, biochemistry, electrochemistry, or a closely related field, with considerable hands-on experience in molecular biology, protein purification and handling, and simple analyses such as UV/visible spectrophotometry.

The ideal candidate will also have experience with enzymes and approaches for elucidating structure, dynamics and mechanism. The project combines working under inert atmosphere, flavoenzyme techniques, analysis of products, fluorescence, NMR and EPR spectroscopies, direct electrochemistry of enzymes immobilized on electrodes, enzyme kinetics (we do not assume that all of these skills are pre-existing). Please view recent papers for a few examples:

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