Postdoctoral Associate

Apply now Job no: 509519
Position type: Full-Time 12-Month
Department: 191001 - Northern Gulf Institute
Location: Miami, FL
Categories: Professional
Position Open Date: Jul 17 2025

The Northern Gulf Institute (NGI) at Mississippi State University is seeking a highly motivated Postdoctoral Associate to spearhead a large-scale marine biodiversity assessment project using environmental DNA (eDNA) collected across the global ocean through the Bio-GO-SHIP project. This position is based at NOAA's Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory (AOML) in Miami, Florida. The successful candidate will be at the forefront of this major initiative to generate and analyze metabarcoding data from thousands of marine water samples, significantly advancing our understanding of ocean life.

This role involves extensive laboratory work in development of high-throughput metabarcoding assays; library preparation using those assays; bioinformatics data analysis, including taxonomic database improvement and the evaluation of novel assignment tools; and data publishing to global biodiversity repositories. This position offers a unique opportunity to collaborate with leading scientists at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), University of California – Irvine, and the Minderoo Foundation, and to make foundational contributions to global marine biodiversity monitoring and open data infrastructure.

The Northern Gulf Institute (NGI) is a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Cooperative Institute comprised of six academic institutions that are geographically distributed across the U.S. Gulf Coast states. The six NGI member institutions are Mississippi State University (lead), the University of Southern Mississippi, Florida State University, Louisiana State University, the University of Alabama in Huntsville, and the Dauphin Island Sea Laboratory.

Together with NOAA and in support of their strategic plan, NGI conducts research on interconnections among Gulf of Mexico environments, habitats, resources, and people and engages in outreach to help others learn about and make decisions based on these interconnections.

• Develop, select, and validate a suite of metabarcoding assays (six or more markers) for broad taxonomic coverage of marine eDNA.
• Perform and/or oversee the high-throughput metabarcode library preparation for approximately 4,000 marine eDNA samples, ensuring rigorous quality control and documentation.
• Leverage open-source bioinformatics pipelines for the processing and taxonomic assignment of all generated metabarcoding data.
• Lead the development of curated taxonomic reference databases, focusing on improving resolution for under-represented marine taxa, particularly pelagic lineages.
• In collaboration with project partners, develop and evaluate advanced computational tools and methods for taxonomic assignment.
• Manage the complete data lifecycle, ensuring all raw sequence data, processed taxonomic data, and associated metadata are submitted to public repositories (e.g., NCBI, OBIS) in compliance with FAIR data principles.
• Disseminate project findings through peer-reviewed publications and presentations at scientific conferences.
• Collaborate closely with the project team at AOML, NGI, WHOI, UCI, and the Minderoo Foundation.

• A Ph.D. in molecular biology, computational biology, bioinformatics, genomics, marine science, or a closely related field.
• Demonstrated experience in molecular biology, specifically with DNA metabarcoding, PCR protocol development, and next-generation sequencing (NGS) library preparation.
• Substantial bioinformatics experience, including proficiency with the Unix command line, management of large sequencing datasets, and development/use of computational workflows.
• Strong programming and data science skills in languages such as Python and/or R.
• A record of scholarly achievement, evidenced by at least one first-author peer-reviewed publication.
• Excellent written and oral communication skills and the ability to work effectively in a collaborative research environment.

• Signifi…