Scientist (Microbial Ecologist)

For more than 100 years, Purina has been revolutionizing pet food production, and its ability to enrich the lives of pets everywhere. By 1956, we began mastering new production techniques and literally reshaped pet care, introducing Dog Chow® as the first extruded dry food. We’re still at it today, with Tidy Cats®, the lightweight cat litter champion of the world and the leader in our category.

Plan, organize and conduct projects to build fundamental knowledge in the area of microbial ecology to develop nutritional innovations to support pet health and wellness.

**Essential Functions:** * Study the mutually beneficial relationships between microbes and pets. * Understand how changes in microbial composition and function influence companion animal health. * Understand mechanisms that govern assembly of the animal’s microbiota into a community. * Use nutrition to influence microbial communities to improve pet health. * Apply and integrate a variety of experimental, computational and statistical methods to study pet microbiome populations * Assist in pre- and probiotics designed to enhance health. * Integrate metabolomics, transcriptomics and other clinical information with microbiome data to develop and test nutrition-research hypotheses. * Lead projects and ensure efficient utilization of resources and budget. * Provide “technical” training as required to operating company personnel. * Effectively communicate results through oral presentations and timely, written technical documentation and reports * Maintain accurate records/log of analytical requests and data. * Travel as necessary. * Practice safety in the work area. **Additional Responsibilities:** * Assist project leaders in interpretation of microbiome data: associations between microbes and metabolic parameters, strategy to predictably modify microbial populations with metrics that demonstrate effects on health parameters. * Stay current on progress in methodology in the field: analysis tools, microbial identification and classification, metagenomics, next gen sequencing. * Research experience in molecular biology and microbial community analysis, including bacterial cultures and classification, quantitative PCR, terminal restriction fragment length polymorphism analysis, next generation sequencing and metagenomics. **Supervision given and received:** • Will be given mentoring and guidance as required for assigned projects

**Job Qulifications (Education, Experience, and Knowledge):** * PhD in microbiology, microbial ecology or related field. * 3+ years postdoctoral or professional experience * Good communication/interpersonal skills * Computer literacy * Must be able to manage multiple assignments/priorities * Good organizational skills * Pro-Active/Self-Starter **Specialized Knowledge/Skills Preferred But Not Required:** * Contribute to the data flow from sequence data to biological interpretation preferably with knowledge and experience in statistical and bioinformatics software (Qiime, Mothur, Usearch, LEfSe, Stamp).