Postdoctoral Researcher - Plant Biochemist in Nitrogen Fixation - Plant Biology Institute

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 .org.

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.

• 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.

The Ellison Institute of Technology (EIT) is seeking a highly motivated and skilled Postdoctoral Researcher in Plant Biochemistry to join its pioneering Plant Biology Institute to contribute to the ‘Biological Nitrogen Fixation’ program. This initiative seeks to engineer biological nitrogen fixation into widely grown crop plants to improve yields and reduce global reliance on synthetic fertilisers. The ultimate goal of this work will be to deliver transformative environmental, economic, and public health benefits by helping to support the transition to scalable and regenerative agricultural systems.

The Postdoctoral Researcher will play a key role in designing and conducting experiments aligned with stage-gated milestones in our plant engineering program. The main responsibilities of the successful candidate will be to optimize the folding, stability, assembly, and functional activity of complex enzymatic systems in plant cells using both transient and stable plant transformation approaches. Successful delivery of these research objectives will require expertise in in silico protein analysis and structural modelling, mass spectrometry–based proteomic analyses (e.g., LC-MS, LC–MS/MS), nitrogen fixation assays (e.g., using the acetylene reduction method), and a strong foundation in plant molecular biology and biochemistry.

Insights generated from this work will directly inform and accelerate our synthetic biology strategy to enable the introduction of novel metabolic capabilities into high-performance crop varieties.

The ideal candidate will have a strong background in biological nitrogen fixation and plant biochemistry. This role offers a unique opportunity to conduct high-impact research at the forefront…