Who we are:

Calico is a research and development company whose mission is to harness advanced technologies to increase our understanding of the biology that controls lifespan, and to devise interventions that enable people to lead longer and healthier lives. Executing on this mission will require an unprecedented level of interdisciplinary effort and a long-term focus for which funding is already in place.

Position description:

Calico is seeking a summer intern to join the Microscopy group. To succeed, you will need to be an enthusiastic team player, detail-oriented, extremely organized and comfortable working on complex problems. The microscopy team invents, prototypes, and develops new imaging techniques, and shares them with the world. In this position, you would add an important advancement to one of our cutting-edge projects. Based on your skills and interests, you’d be matched with one of the following projects:

• Project A: Design and build a custom optical scanning unit, focusing on learning CAD/Solidworks, opto-mechanical assembly and alignment.
• Project B: Mutate and screen a new kind of fluorescent protein, focusing on learning high-throughput screening, DNA editing via CRISPR, and microscopy
• Project C: Prototype and validate a novel image-processing algorithm, focusing on Python coding, especially Numpy and Scipy, and math, especially statistical inference and inverse problems.

For all projects, you’d spend time reading relevant publications, and share your results as an “open science” publication. Based on the needs of your project and your intellectual interests, we’d match you with local experts and mentors for training. Interested students should apply online ASAP and direct any questions to [email protected].

Responsibilities: 

• Gain familiarity with at least one of our cutting-edge imaging techniques
• Partner with a mentor on the Microscopy team to make the technique work better!
• Share the improved technique with the world as an “open science” publication

Position requirements:

• Currently pursuing a Bachelor’s, Master’s or Ph.D. degree in a relevant major
• Strong desire to grow high-tech skills like CAD, coding, gene editing
• Detail-oriented and organized
• Strong teamwork and communication skills
• Self-motivated with a “can-do” attitude
• Flexible, able to respond quickly to shifting priorities and able to multitask
• Available to work in South San Francisco throughout June, July and August of 2020 

Nice to have:

• Experience with or desire to learn coding in Python