The Department of Medicine (DOM) is the largest department within the UC San Diego School of Medicine (SOM) and is responsible for fulfilling its teaching, research, and clinical missions. DOM employs approximately 500 salaried faculty, nearly 200 academic appointees, and more than 300 residents, fellows, and postdocs, supported by almost 1,000 staff members.

Under supervision of the Principal Investigator and the Lab Manager in the Pulmonary, Critical Care & Sleep Medicine Division, the Lab Technician will support the translational research efforts for a variety of research projects focusing primarily on mouse and human physiology. The Lab Technician will assist with maintenance and oversight of a mutant mouse animal colony and will assist with performing animal husbandry tasks including mating, weaning, tagging, and tailing. The Lab Technician will assist with performing genotyping by PCR and will maintain accurate records of husbandry and genotyping activities in the lab's software database. The Lab Technician will assist in ensuring IACUC protocol compliance, monitoring animals, running physiologic studies, and maintenance of accurate and complete research notebooks and data files. In collaboration with the PI and the lab research faculty and staff, the Lab Technician will be responsible for coordinating and managing research studies, to include writing and updating protocols, running cellular and molecular assays, running mouse studies, data collection and entry, trouble-shooting and problem solving. The Lab Technician will support in vivo experiments using intact mice (e.g., administration of drugs by injection and oral gavage, measuring lung function and monitoring body weight); ex vivo experiments using isolated mouse lung; and isolation and/or culture of primary cells from mouse lung. The Lab Technician will also participate in handling and processing lung tissue from human donors. Other duties assigned as needed.

• Theoretical knowledge as required in a bachelor's degree in biology, immunology, microbiology, molecular biology or related field or a combination of education and experience.

• Experience working with mice in a laboratory setting.

• Experience with interpretation and understanding of research protocols.

• Experience working in a laboratory research setting with knowledge of protocols, principles and standards.

• Experience in molecular and cellular biology (e.g., DNA and RNA isolation, PCR/RT-PCR, protein isolation, western blot, cell culture).

• Good interpersonal skills, including excellent written and verbal communication skills; ability to with a diverse group of people to include physicians, researchers and students.

• Excellent planning and organizational skills and ability to work in a changing, multiple-demand setting in order to prioritize a large volume of work and meet deadlines efficiently and accurately.

• Demonstrated experience using database, word processing and spreadsheet applications.

• Must be willing to work with mice, human blood, bacteria and biohazardous materials.

• Must be willing to work weekends and evenings as needed.

• Employment is subject to a criminal background check.