Fermentation Engineer Co-op
Our mission is to make biology easier to engineer. Ginkgo is constructing, editing, and redesigning the living world in order to answer the globe’s growing challenges in health, energy, food, materials, and more. Our bioengineers make use of an in-house automated foundry for designing and building new organisms.
The Fermentation Team works closely with strain engineers and high throughput screening to culture engineered microbes in bench top fermentation vessels. We develop and then optimize fermentation processes to maximize performance of the intended target and reduce byproduct accumulation. Ultimately the goal is to scale up these strains and protocols to commercially relevant production facilities, so we design our processes with these constraints in mind.
As a Fermentation Engineer Co-op, you will learn fermentation fundamentals by operating the highly automated benchtop ambr250 fermentation platform. You will work closely with a Fermentation engineer on projects to design experiments to improve production of the target compounds and better understand strain physiology and growth dynamics as a function of media and environmental conditions. In addition, you will analyze, interpret, and share results and use this information to help design the next experiment. Possible projects could include integrating a nitrogen mass balance calculation into our automated fermentation calculation platform via the Python programming language, or developing a robust and scalable chemostat protocol in the Sartorius Ambr® 250 HT multi-parallel fermentation platform.
The Ginkgo Bioworks Early Talent program is open to students who will return to their degree programs upon completion of their employment at Ginkgo. Candidates must be enrolled in a United States based institution and/or have work authorization in the United States to be eligible to participate.
Responsibilities
- Setup and operate fully automated bioreactor system for fermentation
- Apply DOE methods for strain and process optimization
- Characterize strain physiology and growth dynamics in small scale models
- Analyze results using statistical software
Minimum Requirements
- Currently enrolled in a bachelor’s degree program in Chemical Engineering, Bioengineering, Microbiology, or similar field, with an interest in pursuing a Biotechnology career path
- Current sophomore or junior at the time of application
- Ability to learn independently and gain expertise
Preferred Capabilities and Experience
- Willingness to learn and use a variety of software tools, including code and Ginkgo software under active development, and automation tools, including utilizing liquid handling robots
- Wet lab skills
We also feel that it’s important to point out the obvious here – there’s a serious lack of diversity in our industry, and that needs to change. Our goal is to help drive that change. Ginkgo is deeply committed to diversity, equity, and inclusion in all of its practices, especially when it comes to growing our team. Our culture promotes inclusion and embraces how rewarding it is to work with people from all walks of life.
We’re developing a powerful biological engineering platform, so we must remain mindful of the many ways our technology can – and will – impact people around the world. We care about how our platform is used, and having a diverse team to build it gives us the best chance that it’s something we’ll be proud of as it continues to grow. Therefore, it’s critical that we incorporate the diverse voices and visions of all those who play a role in the future of biology.
It is the policy of Ginkgo Bioworks to provide equal employment opportunities to all employees and employment applicants.