Scientist, Antibody Discovery, Horns Lab

About Arc Institute The Arc Institute is a new scientific institution conducting curiosity-driven basic science and technology development to understand and treat complex human diseases. Headquartered in Palo Alto, California, Arc is an independent research organization founded on the belief that many important research programs will be enabled by new institutional models. Arc operates in partnership with Stanford University, UCSF, and UC Berkeley.

While the prevailing university research model has yielded many tremendous successes, we believe in the importance of institutional experimentation as a way to make progress. These include: Funding: Arc fully funds Core Investigators’ (PIs’) research groups, liberating scientists from the typical constraints of project-based external grants. Technology: Biomedical research has become increasingly dependent on complex tooling.

Arc Technology Centers develop, optimize, and deploy rapidly advancing experimental and computational technologies in collaboration with Core Investigators. Support: Arc aims to provide first-class support—operationally, financially, and scientifically—that will enable scientists to pursue long-term high risk, high reward research that can meaningfully advance progress in disease cures, including neurodegeneration, cancer, and immune dysfunction. Culture: We believe that culture matters enormously in science and that excellence is difficult to sustain.

We aim to create a culture that is focused on scientific curiosity, a deep commitment to truth, broad ambition, and selfless collaboration. Arc has scaled to over 350 people to date. With $650M+ in committed funding and a state of the art new lab facility in Palo Alto, Arc will continue to grow quickly in the coming years.

About the position We are seeking a highly skilled and motivated Scientist to join the Horns Lab at the Arc Institute. In this position, you will lead the development of a novel platform for mapping human antibody specificities at scale. You will play a critical role in building, optimizing, and applying a system for high-throughput identification of antigen-specific B cells and their antibody sequences through single-cell sequencing.

Your work will directly impact our understanding of human immunity and the discovery of new antibodies. The successful candidate will develop and scale this antibody discovery platform within the Horns lab at the Arc Institute. This work will initially focus on optimizing antigen-specific B cell isolation, establishing single-cell sequencing readouts, and scaling to multiplexed screens.

In the longer term, this platform will be applied to comprehensively profile human immune repertoires for understanding human immunology in health and disease. The candidate will collaborate with other members of Arc’s labs and Technology Centers in a dynamic environment to drive scientific discoveries, including groups within Arc Institute who are leaders in RNA biology, single-cell genomics, and AI/ML. The ideal candidate would have a passion for cutting-edge technology development and a proven track record of working in an interdisciplinary environment and turning concepts into reliable methods and results.

This is an excellent opportunity for an ambitious self-starter who is motivated to apply his/her skills to diverse projects and enjoys working in a collaborative, fast-paced team environment. About you You are passionate about science and understanding human immunity through the lens of new technology. You are excited to build new platforms for antibody discovery and immune repertoire analysis.

You are creative and eager to explore new approaches beyond the techniques you are familiar with. You enjoy stepping out of your comfort zone to learn new things and develop new experimental approaches. You work fast, yet are diligent and detail-oriented.

You are good at troubleshooting.