September 7, 2011

Dear Colleague:

Georgia State University is seeking to fill a key staff position, Director of NMR Facilities, over the next several months.  A detailed description of the position and its setting in Atlanta, Georgia, are given on the following pages along with instructions on the application procedure.  We would very much appreciate it if you would  share this document with potential candidates in your department or institute.

Sincerely yours,

Stuart Allison

Chair, NMR Search Committee

Georgia State University

Atlanta, GA 30302-4092
Director of NMR Facilities at Georgia State University

The Department of Chemistry and the Center for Biotechnology and Drug Design at Georgia State University are seeking to fill a Director of NMR Facilities position before December 1, 2011.  Interested candidates should have a PhD or equivalent in an NMR-related field, postdoctoral or similar training, and experience in biomacromolecular NMR work.  Candidates should have state of the art knowledge of NMR hardware and software, excellent communication skills, and the ability to work across a broad area of applications from routine small molecule NMR service to solving sophisticated research problems. 

The NMR director will be a member of the Department of Chemistry staff and be part of the Center for Biotechnology and Drug Design. The Chemistry Department has an annual external support of about $5M, 120 graduate students, 50 postdoctoral fellows, and a faculty of 35 for extensive collaborations and NMR-related research work. The Department is also home to the editorial offices of one book series entitled "A Wiley Series in Drug Discovery and Development," and two journals, Heterocyclic Communications and Medicinal Research Reviews.  The latter journal was ranked #1 in Impact Factors (10.2) last year among over 40 medicinal chemistry journals worldwide. The NMR director will also need to work closely with faculty and students in Biology, the Neuroscience Institute, and the broader university research community. There are many other highly active research labs for collaboration opportunities. Currently, there are four NMR instruments in the NMR facility: one Varian 600 MHz, one Varian 500 MHz, and two Bruker 400 MHz. The Center for Biotechnology and Drug Design also has excellent instrument infrastructure in other areas related to biomedical research, such as surface plasmon resonance, mass spectrometry, imaging and microscopy, and DNA sequencing. GSU has also recently been ranked among the top 15 academic institutions as the “best place to work” by The Scientist magazine.

The search is part of a university-wide effort to strengthen biomedical research at GSU. Along this line, two new centers have been established this year: the Center for Diagnostics and Therapeutics (CDT), and the Center for Inflammation, Infection, and Immunity (C3I). Eight new faculty lines have been allocated to these two Centers. Seven senior hires with existing NIH funding have already joined GSU or have accepted offers. These include Professor Peng George Wang as Professor of Chemistry and Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar in Chemical Glycobiology (endowed chair) and Professor Jiandong Li as Professor of Biology, Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar (endowed chair), and Director of C3I.

For full consideration, applicants should submit a cover letter, C.V., 3 letters of reference, and three representative publications through the GSU Employment Office at http://www.gsu.edu/jobs/ . (Optionally, the publications and letters of reference can be sent directly to Dr. Allison (see below)).  Click on "Online Job Application" and follow the instructions. For assistance using the system, please contact the Staff Recruitment and Retention Office at 404-413-3270. The official title is Research Scientist in the Department of Chemistry, vacancy # 0602074.

Although the cover letter and CV must be submitted through the GSU Employment Office as discussed above, applicants may choose to send three representative publications and letters of recommendation directly to:

    Professor Stuart Allison, Chair, NMR Search Committee,
    Department of Chemistry
    P.O. Box 4098
    Georgia State University
    Atlanta, Georgia 30302-4098.

    Email:  sallison@gsu.edu

For courier delivery, please use the following address:

    Department of Chemistry
    100 Piedmont Avenue
    Georgia State University
    Atlanta, Georgia 30303.

We encourage candidates to submit both electronic and paper files.

Application processing and reviewing will begin immediately and the search will remain open until the position is filled. Georgia State University, a Research University of the University System of Georgia, is an EEO/AA employer and encourages applications from women and under-represented minority groups. Offers of employment will be conditional upon background verification.