The University of Washington
Department of Bioengineering
Invites Applications for Tenure Track Position in Synthetic Biology

The Department of Bioengineering at the University of Washington (UW) invites applications for a tenure track position in the area of Synthetic Biology. Successful candidates will have a plan to apply synthetic biology to problems with direct relevance to human health.

Applications are sought at all levels: Assistant, Associate and Full Professor, but those at the Assistant Professor level are particularly encouraged. Ph.D. or M.D. degrees are required. The successful candidate will be expected to develop an internationally recognized research program and to participate in the teaching and service missions of the department. Scientists and engineers who apply should show evidence of excellence, originality and productivity in research and potential for excellent teaching. In order to maximize the impact of this hire, successful candidates will be selected, in part, on the basis of their complementarity to existing UW faculty with expertise in synthetic biology, and to other synthetic biology faculty being hired in other departments at this time (see http://synbio.washington.edu). These candidates will be expected to attract strong support from one or more additional departments within the UW and will be expected to follow UW’s strong tradition of collaboration across disciplinary boundaries. Candidates with interests in translational medicine are also encouraged to take advantage of our active Coulter Translational Research Partnership.

Applications must be submitted electronically at https://www.engr.washington.edu/facsearch/apply.phtml?pos_id=111. Applicant review will begin immediately and continue until the position is filled. All positions are contingent on the availability of funding.

The University of Washington is a recipient of a National Science Foundation ADVANCE Institutional Transformation Award to increase the participation of women in academic science and engineering careers. UW faculty engage in teaching, research, and service. The University of Washington is building a culturally diverse faculty and strongly encourages applications from women and minority candidates. The University of Washington is an Affirmative Action, Equal Opportunity employer.

Standard Biological Parts Knowledgebase

Galdzicki M, Rodriguez C, Chandran D, Sauro HM, Gennari JH (2011) Standard Biological Parts Knowledgebase. PLoS ONE 6(2): e17005. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0017005

Abstract

We have created the Knowledgebase of Standard Biological Parts (SBPkb) as a publically accessible Semantic Web resource for synthetic biology (sbolstandard.org). The SBPkb allows researchers to query and retrieve standard biological parts for research and use in synthetic biology. Its initial version includes all of the information about parts stored in the Registry of Standard Biological Parts (partsregistry.org). SBPkb transforms this information so that it is computable, using our semantic framework for synthetic biology parts. This framework, known as SBOL-semantic, was built as part of the Synthetic Biology Open Language (SBOL), a project of the Synthetic Biology Data Exchange Group. SBOL-semantic represents commonly used synthetic biology entities, and its purpose is to improve the distribution and exchange of descriptions of biological parts. In this paper, we describe the data, our methods for transformation to SBPkb, and finally, we demonstrate the value of our knowledgebase with a set of sample queries. We use RDF technology and SPARQL queries to retrieve candidate “promoter” parts that are known to be both negatively and positively regulated. This method provides new web based data access to perform searches for parts that are not currently possible.

Essential information for synthetic DNA sequences : Nature Biotechnology
Jean Peccoud, J Christopher Anderson,Deepak Chandran,Douglas Densmore,Michal Galdzicki,Matthew W Lux,Cesar A Rodriguez, Guy-Bart Stan & Herbert M Sauro

The Synthetic Biology Data Exchange Group calls for more disclosure of sequence data for synthetic biology papers.