Postdoctoral Fellow - Organic and Medicinal Chemistry

A postdoctoral position is available for an organic chemist to work on multi-step synthesis of mostly nitrogenous small molecules on a multigram scale in the Drug Design and Synthesis Section, National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), 9800 Medical Center Drive, Rockville, Maryland. Our major research direction is the elucidation of the structure and function of neurotransmitter systems in the mammalian central nervous system (CNS) in normal, drug-altered, and pathological states and the molecular mechanism of action of CNS active drugs. DDSS has been involved with the rational design and chemical synthesis of novel agonists, antagonists, imaging agents, and affinity ligands as well as haptens for anti-heroin and anti-fentanyl vaccines and highly biased G-protein mu-opioid ligands.

Candidates should be very close to obtaining a Ph.D. or have a Ph.D. with less than two years of postdoctoral experience, demonstrated experience in synthetic organic/medicinal chemistry with emphasis on heterocyclic chemistry, and a proven record in carrying out synthesis on multi-gram scale. The incumbent must be able to synthesize, purify, crystallize, optically resolve, identify, characterize and analyze new compounds (HRMS, 1HNMR, 13CNMR, HPLC, optical rotation) and search the chemical literature under the supervision of senior staff. The candidate must be highly motivated and able to work independently or with minimal supervision. Incumbent will collaborate with colleagues in various pharmacological and other diverse scientific disciplines and must possess good interpersonal and organizational skills and excellent communication skills with fluency in both spoken and written English. The incumbent will be responsible for maintaining laboratory notebooks with complete records of all scientific experiments and raw data and be able to prepare technical reports, manuscripts, patent applications as needed, and present work orally at seminars internally and at national and local scientific meetings.

The NIH is dedicated to building a diverse community in its training and employment programs. DHHS, NIH and NIDA are Equal Opportunity Employers.
Selection for this position will be based solely on merit, with no discrimination for non-merit reasons such as race, color, religion, gender, sexual orientation, national origin, political affiliation, marital status, disability, age, or membership or non-membership in an employee organization. The NIH encourages the application and nomination of qualified women, minorities, and individuals with disabilities.

This postdoc fellowship opportunity at NIH is covered by a bargaining unit, the UAW Local 2750 also known as the NIH Fellows United.