Senior Program Officer, Preclinical Vaccine Development, Accelerator (*LTE

Position: Senior Program Officer, Preclinical Vaccine Development, Accelerator (*2-Year LTE)
** The Foundation
**** The Team
** Our Global Health (GH) program harnesses advances in science and technology to save lives in low and middle income countries. We focus on the health problems that have a major impact in developing countries but get too little attention and funding. Where proven tools exist, we support sustainable ways to improve their delivery. Where they don’t, we invest in research and development of new interventions, such as vaccines, drugs, and diagnostics.

Our work in infectious diseases focuses on strategies to fight and prevent HIV/AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis, neglected and other infectious diseases, enteric and diarrheal diseases and pneumonia. These strategies are supported by functional teams that focus on Discovery and Translational Sciences, Vaccine Development, and Integrated Development.
The Accelerator funds the creation of novel technology capabilities that enable the achievement of the foundation’s mission by fostering the conception, design, and testing of fundamentally new biotech platforms that have the potential to change current best practices or business models and show proof of concept for these platforms. By leveraging grants, equity, and donor capital, we work to ensure the capabilities advanced further the foundation’s objectives and support the transition of these new technology platforms to execution partners.

Some platform capabilities that we are exploring include harnessing the power of chemo-sensing for ultra-high sensitivity detection of volatiles, programming immune system responses for design of next generation vaccine modalities, and engineering antibodies for oral delivery. We will be exploring exciting new transformative technology capabilities beyond these within our broad mandate. Our team also includes more mature programmatic units aiming to achieve a “single-shot cure” for HIV and sickle cell disease in the next ten years, harness AI and machine learning tools to radically advance drug discovery and development to cure HPV and pre-eclampsia, and develop five new preclinical oral polio vaccine candidates in the next two years.
** Your Role
** As a key member of the Accelerator team, the Senior Program Officer, Preclinical Vaccine Development, is accountable for a portfolio of investments and partnerships on priority product development efforts for new oral polio vaccine candidates. These will consist of several “next generation”, innovative vaccines and approaches to vaccine development expected to deliver high-impact in the near term, with a goal to develop five preclinical candidates for down selection to clinical development within two years.

You will provide leadership, strategy development, and communications on polio preclinical candidate development priorities to Product Development Partners, and other internal and external foundation partners. You will also partner closely with the Vaccine Development and Polio teams to contribute to the continued development of the oral polio vaccine candidates as they transition to those teams for clinical phases. The Accelerator works predominantly in preclinical innovation for fundamentally new modalities, requiring expertise and comfort in development of novel clinical products.
*** This is a 2-Year LTE position.
***** What You’ll Do
*** Partner closely with team leadership, including the Director, Accelerator and Distinguished Fellow, AI-Enabled Cures Frontier, to develop, communicate, and implement the overall strategy for novel oral polio vaccines.
* Act as foundation “Project Lead” for the novel oral polio preclinical vaccine development programs.
* Negotiate, implement, and manage a portfolio of grants or performance-based contracts; including alignment of internal and external stakeholders, review of letters of inquiry and grant proposals as well as providing clear, concise and insightful written analyses and recommendations for funding.
* Consult, provide thought partnership, and support to grantees and other partners to maximize the impact of projects and the creation of well-integrated vaccine preclinical development plans.
* Serve as an advisor on preclinical vaccine study design.
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