Date Posted: 05/09/2025
Req ID: 42825
Faculty/Division: Faculty of Arts & Science
Department: Acceleration Consortium
Campus: St. George (Downtown Toronto)
Position Number: 00057765
Description:
About us:
The Faculty of Arts & Science is the heart of Canada’s leading university and one of the most comprehensive and diverse academic divisions in the world. The strength of Arts & Science derives from our combined teaching and research excellence in the humanities, sciences and social sciences across 29 departments, seven colleges and 46 interdisciplinary centres, institutes and programs.
The Acceleration Consortium (AC) at the University of Toronto (U of T) is leading a transformative shift in scientific discovery that will accelerate technology development and commercialization. The AC is a global community of academia, industry, and government that leverages the power of artificial intelligence (AI), robotics, materials sciences, and high-throughput chemistry to create self-driving laboratories (SDLs), also called materials acceleration platforms (MAPs). These autonomous labs rapidly design materials and molecules needed for a sustainable, healthy, and resilient future, with applications ranging from renewable energy and consumer electronics to drugs. AC Staff Scientists will advance the infield of AI-driven autonomous discovery and develop the materials and molecules required to address society’s largest challenges, such as climate change, water pollution, and future pandemics.
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.
We can only realize our mission with the dedication and excellence of engaged staff and faculty. The diversity of opportunities and perspectives within the Faculty reflect the local and global landscape and the need for curiosity, innovative thinking and collaboration. At Arts & Science, we take pride in our legacy of innovation and discovery that has changed the way we think about the world.
Your opportunity:
Reporting to the Executive Director, Acceleration Consortium and working under the guidance of (Senior) Research Associates, this position will play a pivotal role in supporting research projects focused on accelerating the discovery of newmaterials and molecules using self-driving labs. This position is located across all of the SDLs at the AC. Each lab is engaged in autonomous, AI-driven discovery to advance materials discovery and optimization for a wide range of materials systems and technologies including chemical reactions, drug discovery and development, polymeric materials, pharmaceuticals and formulations, and autonomous biological characterization. As a Lab Technician, you will work with a multidisciplinary team of engineers, scientists, and industry stakeholders to set up labs and develop automated platforms for materials science and chemistry. Example design projects include: developing application interface programming (API) wrappers to interface with other open source projects, developing and orchestrating lab tasks and workflows through APIs from a centralized interface, documenting and standardizing the code developed in this process, training users to use the interface and developed wrappers/drivers, and reporting tasks therein.
This is a 2-year term position with the possibility of renewal.
Your responsibilities will include:
- Coordinate robotic platforms and equipment with open-source APIs to centralize control of experimental workflows
- Preparing draft statistical reports and summaries from data collected
- Creating and editing a standard operating procedures manual
- Analyzing and recommending options for project design
- Work closely with multidisciplinary engineering and science teams to design and implement customized automation tools for research in self-driving labs.
- Develop, program, and document software tools to enable device operation (e.g. drivers or API-wrappers), device intercommunication via local network, USB connection, RS232 comm, etc., and simple data monitoring and transfer; Develope code for user-interfacing web or stand-alone applications
- Design and execute testing and benchmarking tasks to assess the performance of newly developed automation solutions
- Serving as a technical resource to internal team members and external stakeholders
Essential Qualifications:
- Bachelor's Degree in engineering or computer science, or acceptable combination of equivalent experience and education
- Minimum three years of recent and relevant experience in supporting research projects focused on diverse formulation, including experimental design and execution, prototype development, data analysis, data reporting, and lab maintenance.
- Experience with device communication protocols (e.g. RS232) and IOT communication protocols (e.g. MQTT)
- Strong abilities in Python and object-oriented programming, ideally also including experience with C, C++, C#, and SQL.
- Experience with interfacing with APIs to develop custom wrappers for tasks including monitoring device status, sending/receiving commands, downloading data, uploading config files, etc.
- Excellent communication skills, both verbal and written, with the ability to effectively collaborate with interdisciplinary teams and present technical information to diverse audiences.
- Willingness to learn new skills and tackle complex open-ended problems
Assets (Nonessential):
- Master's degree in engineering or computer science strongly preferred
- Experience working in a wet chemical laboratory environment
- Experience with additive manufacturing (e.g. 3D Printing, Machining, etc.)
- Experience with microcontroller programming (e.g. Raspberry Pis, Arduinos etc.) and circuit design
To be successful in this role you will be:
- Communicator
- Efficient
- Insightful
- Meticulous
- Organized
- Team player
Closing Date: 05/23/2025, 11:59PM ET
Employee Group: USW
Appointment Type: Grant - Term
Schedule: Full-Time
Pay Scale Group & Hiring Zone:
USW Pay Band 11 -- $75,223. with an annual step progression to a maximum of $96,196. Pay scale and job class assignment is subject to determination pursuant to the Job Evaluation/Pay Equity Maintenance Protocol.
Job Category: Engineering / Technical
Lived Experience Statement
Candidates who are members of Indigenous, Black, racialized and 2SLGBTQ+ communities, persons with disabilities, and other equity deserving groups are encouraged to apply, and their lived experience shall be taken into consideration as applicable to the posted position.
