Scientist, Small Molecule Chemist - Plant Biology Institute

Join us at EIT:

At the Ellison Institute of Technology (EIT), we’re on a mission to translate scientific discovery into real world impact. We bring together visionary scientists, technologists, engineers, researchers, educators and innovators to tackle humanity’s greatest challenges in four transformative areas:

• Health, Medical Science & Generative Biology
• Food Security & Sustainable Agriculture
• Climate Change & Managing CO₂
• Artificial Intelligence & Robotics

This is ambitious work - work that demands curiosity, courage, and a relentless drive to make a difference. At EIT, you’ll join a community built on excellence, innovation, tenacity, trust, and collaboration, where bold ideas become real-world breakthroughs. Together, we push boundaries, embrace complexity, and create solutions to scale ideas from lab to society. Explore more at www.eit.org.

Welcome to the Plant Biology Institute:

The Plant Biology Institute, headed by Professor Steve Kelly, is a key part of the Ellison Institute of Technology (EIT) Oxford. The institute aims to develop impactful and commercially sustainable solutions for improving global food production and planetary health through pioneering plant science research.

The Plant Biology Institute will unite world-class researchers who are focused on expanding the frontiers of plant science. Our research is focused on enhancing our ability to feed the planet while simultaneously improving the climate and ecosystem outcomes of food production. By embedding cutting-edge plant science research within an organisation that is focused on solving global challenges at scale, we aim to accelerate the timeline from discovery to global impact.

Areas of exploration include:

• Improved plant productivity, both indoors and outside.
• Reduced reliance on inputs including water, fertilisers, pesticides, and herbicides.
• Novel decarbonised plant-based production platforms for food and medicines.
• Advanced technologies that speed up discovery and deployment in plants. 

Researchers will have access to state-of-the-art laboratory and plant growth facilities and have opportunities to collaborate with experts at the forefront of research on AI, automation, and generative biology across the EIT ecosystem. They will also work with global leaders in market development, commercialisation, and impact creation. The Plant Biology Institute has long-term substantial funding to support the unique scale and ambition of its vision.

 

Your Role:

EIT is seeking a Scientist to join the Cell Based Production programme. The successful candidate will contribute to innovative research in plant specialised metabolism engineering, within the overall programme goal of advancing plant and cell tissue culture for novel decarbonised plant-based production of food and/or medicines, taking projects from fundamental discovery through to technological development and scalable application.

The ideal candidate will have a strong background in analytics of small molecules and natural products of plant specialised metabolism, with expertise in compound identification, extraction, purification and mass spectrometry as well as computationally supported structural assignment.

The scientist will be expected to show awareness to IP generation and play an active role in translating research into real-world and commercial solutions aligned with EIT’s mission of humane technological advancement. This role offers a unique opportunity to conduct high-impact research at the forefront of plant science while collaborating across multidisciplinary teams to drive innovation from lab to global impact.

Your Responsibilities:

• Support metabolic engineering of plant natural products with applications in health and medicine in a highly collaborative environment.
• Design and conduct research focused on class-targeted metabolomics of plant specialised metabolism in complex mixtures from non-model sources. 
• Develop customized libraries based on chromatographic and mass spectrometry-based features.
• Fundamental understanding of carbon flux analysis to support computationally assisted model building and prediction of regulatory and metabolic bottlenecks steps.
• Collaborate with EIT Oxford AI and Robotics teams to establish high throughput, targeted analytical procedures.
• Drive rigorous experimental design, execution, and data interpretations, ensuring robust and reproducible scientific outcomes.
• Deliver research progress through stage gated milestones.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams to incorporate cutting edge research techniques into experiments.
• Present scientific work at seminars within EIT and at external meetings, including contributing to discussions on developments within the field, in compliance with company disclosure procedures.
• Recognise and act on opportunities for the creation of IP and cooperating in patent protection and in impact delivery.
• Conduct research ethically, in compliance with EIT policy, regulatory guidance, and best scientific practice.

Essential Skills, Qualifications & Experience:

• PhD in organic chemistry, natural product biochemistry, plant molecular biology or related discipline.
• Extraction, purification and de novo structural elucidation of natural products.
• Experience in small molecule synthesis and characterization. 
• Demonstrated experience in collaboration with cross-disciplinary teams, such as synthetic biology or molecular biology.

Desirable Skills, Qualifications & Experience:

• Hands-on experience with recent technologies in GC-, LC-mass spectrometry and structural analysis supported by NMR.
• Experience with organic synthesis/retrosynthesis for analytical standards and supporting rational pathway discovery. 
• Understanding of plant metabolic pathways from network perspective, i.e. conjugation and derivatization.
• Foundational knowledge in enzyme biochemistry. 
• Demonstration of commercial awareness and versatility of research that could serve a wide range of different applications (e.g. oils, pharmaceuticals, foods).
• Interest in mentoring members of the research group and contributing to building and maintaining a publication record.
• Recognition of the value of translation of scientific results into commercial opportunities consistent with the EIT humane endeavours.

• Salary dependent on experience + travel allowance + bonus

• Enhanced holiday. Our annual leave allowance is 25 days plus 8 bank holidays and an additional 3 days between Christmas and New Year. You will also have the opportunity to purchase an additional 5 days annual leave in January and July.
• Pension - Employer contribution 7.5%, minimum employee contribution 5%
• Life Assurance.
• Income Protection
• Private Medical Insurance as standard for you, your partner and any dependents. Including hospital Cash Plan
• Employee discounts
• Electric car scheme
• Nursery Salary Sacrifice scheme
• Cycle to Work Scheme
• Family Planning
• Neurodiversity support including advise and assessments
• Coaching & Therapy services