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 will fully fund 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.
About The Position
The Arc Institute is seeking a Scientific Design Strategist to join our Scientific Publications team and work closely with our Core Labs and Technology Centers to facilitate clear, meaningful, and visually appealing communication of scientific data through figures and visual media. The successful candidate will create data visualizations, technical schematics, and scientific illustrations, maintaining a consistent visual identity across the Institute’s scientific outputs (manuscripts, protocols, presentations and seminars, blog posts, and lab websites).
About You
- You’ve always found the process of making figures and visualizing scientific datasets to be one of the most enjoyable parts of being a scientist
- You are intrigued by many different scientific topic areas and always want to learn new things beyond your own area of expertise
- You act as a resource for your colleagues on how to tell compelling stories through data visualizations, schematics, and other visual outputs
- You love working directly with students and postdocs and take on a training mindset to help them build visual design skills
- You’re an ambitious self-starter capable of managing multiple projects simultaneously and adapting your working style to best serve the needs to different Core Investigators
- Work closely with Institute faculty, research scientists, postdocs, and graduate students to develop manuscript figures for publication in top journals
- Collaborate with other members of the Scientific Publications Team to tell stories through data
- Support Arc’s Communications team with scientific illustrations for blog posts, social media, and web pages
- Provide training across the Institute to support skill development in scientific data visualization and figure construction
- Keep on top of several projects at once, spanning scientific focus areas including biotechnology, functional genomics, immuno-oncology, neurodegeneration, and biochemistry
- PhD in a relevant life or data science discipline and 2+ years of post-PhD experience
- Expertise in data analysis and visualization, particularly in creating high-quality figures for scientific publications (some formal training and/or work experience in data science, data visualization, or scientific illustration preferred)
- Broad scientific literacy across the Institute’s research focus areas (functional genomics, neuroscience, immunology, biotechnology, chemical biology)
- Extensive experience with vector design platforms (e.g. Adobe Illustrator, Figma)
- Experience with data analysis in Python and R, preferably in the context of high-throughput biology and/or genomics
- Exceptional communication skills and a strong sense of visual style
- Strong organizational skills with a demonstrated ability to prioritize and drive several concurrent projects