Staff Scientist

**Date Posted**:08/07/2025
**Req ID**:44678
**Faculty/Division**: Faculty of Arts & Science
**Department**: Acceleration Consortium
**Campus**: St. George (Downtown Toronto)

**Description**:
The Acceleration Consortium (AC) promotes an inclusive research environment and supports the EDI priorities of the unit.

The Acceleration Consortium received a $200M Canadian First Research Excellence Grant for seven years to develop self-driving labs for chemistry and materials, the largest ever grant to a Canadian University. This grant will provide the Acceleration Consortium with seven years of funding to execute its vision.

The AC is developing seven advanced SDLs plus an AI and Automation lab:

- SDL1 - Inorganic solid-state compounds for advanced materials and energy
- SDL2 - Organic small molecules for sustainability and health
- SDL5 - Formulations for pharmaceuticals, consumer products, and coatings
- SDL6 - Biocompatibility with organoids / organ-on-a-chip
- SDL7 - Synthetic scale-up of materials and molecules (University of British Columbia partner lab)
- A central AI and Automation lab to support all the SDLs

**Position Overview**:
We are seeking a motivated and skilled researcher to join the Acceleration Consortium working with the Human Organ Mimicry SDL. The Self-Driving Lab (SDL) focused on Human Organ Mimicry (HOM) embodies an autonomous artificial intelligence (AI)-assisted platform for culturing and screening high-fidelity models of functional tissues and diseases. In addition to fundamental capabilities like cell passaging and sample preparation, the platform will facilitate closed-loop optimization campaigns designed to optimize cell culture conditions (e.g., growth media and extracellular matrix support), automated generation of model-specific datasets and production of highly reproducible batches of cells with specific phenotypes (e.g., patient-derived organoids (PDOs) and differentiated iPSCs), and development of advanced automated workflows and AI tools (e.g., static and dynamic co-culture organ-on-a-chip (OOC) models, colony picking and bioprinting).

**This posted position is for a Staff Scientist at SDL6 (Human Organ Mimicry).**

**Expertise that is desired**:
**Computational expertise**
- Programming and high-performance computing
- Experience in design of computational pipelines for large-scale imaging
- Experience with programming languages and scripting methods (i.e. Python, MATLAB, C++, CUDA, Bash, and/or SQL) and machine learning / deep learning methods
- Active learning, exploration, optimal experiment design, Bayesian optimization, reinforcement learning, and/or representation learning

**Additional expertise that is desired (but not required)**:

- Experience with ML-based tools for image-analysis and signal processing, development of ML prediction tools
- Experience with PyTorch and/or TensorFlow, experience with databases and high-content imaging platforms
- Familiarity with generative modeling
- Experience with advanced ML techniques for representation learning and multi-modal data integration

The Staff Scientist will work with a diverse team of leading experts at U of T, including Professors Alán Aspuru-Guzik, Anatole von Lilienfeld, Florian Shkurti, Animesh Garg, Oleksandr Voznyy, Robert Batey, Cheryl Arrowsmith, Milica Radisic, and Vuk Stambolic. The Staff Scientist will also work with Staff Scientists in Human Organ Mimicry and AI SDL.

The Staff Scientists involved in the AC are highly skilled and experienced researchers who will work independently to develop the AI and automation technologies required to build robust and scalable self-driving labs, manage these SDLs, and design and implement research programs (based on the direction of the AC’s scientific leadership team) that leverage the SDL platforms to discover materials and molecules. Moreover, the Staff Scientists will work collectively, sharing knowledge among each other, faculty, and trainees. This role will report to the Academic Director and Executive Director of the Acceleration Consortium.

**The components and duties of the work can include**:

- **
Machine learning for SDL Development**
- ** SDL and Automation Development**

Working with the AC community, including faculty and partners, determine the required capabilities of the SDLs to be built. Design and testing of closed-loop optimization campaigns for cell culture media optimization using the selected framework. Developing SDL plans to meet user requirements and designing novel instruments for autonomous cell culture experiments. Developing customized hardware and Python software packages to build SDLs. Selecting, procurement, and installation of the equipment required for SDLs.
- **
Research Direction**

Working independently to develop research programs that leverage the AC’s SDLs and supports the research objectives of academic and industrial partners. Translating computational approaches ranging from 2D cell culture models to more complex 3D syst