RESEARCH SCIENTIST ENGINEER 1

As a UW employee, you have a unique opportunity to change lives on our campuses, in our state and around the world. UW employees offer their boundless energy, creative problem solving skills and dedication to build stronger minds and a healthier world.

UW faculty and staff also enjoy outstanding benefits, professional growth opportunities and unique resources in an environment noted for diversity, intellectual excitement, artistic pursuits and natural beauty.

The Catterall lab has an exciting opportunity for a Research Scientist Engineer 1 (RSE1) to join their team.

The Catterall lab is located in the Magnuson Health Sciences Building on the University of Washington Seattle campus. For more information on the Catterall lab and field of research, visit https://pharmacology.uw.edu/team-member/william-catterall/

Research Project

Under the direction of Dr. Ruth Westenbroek, Research Associate Professor of Pharmacology, Dr. Christine Cheah, Acting Assistant Professor of Neurology, the RSE1 will specifically engage in a project studying voltage-gated sodium channels which generate electrical signals, called action potentials, that are used by neurons to communicate with each other and to control most physiological processes. They are composed of a large a subunit that forms a voltage-regulated sodium pore across the cell membrane plus smaller auxiliary b subunits. Dysfunction of sodium channels causes many diseases, including epilepsy and autism. Dravet Syndrome is a devastating childhood form of genetic epilepsy.  We are using a mouse model of Dravet Syndrome to test novel therapies and to understand how the hyperexcitability that causes epilepsy can arise in neural circuits. Another current research project is aimed at understanding the functional changes caused by specific autism-related mutations in sodium channels and at incorporating these mutations into mice to study the effects of these mutations on neural circuits and mouse behavior.

DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES

The Research Scientist Engineer 1 in this position will be responsible for managing a colony of mice with epilepsy and autism caused by genetic mutations under the direction of research faculty members in the laboratory. These duties will include: