Join Our Team!

Graduate students in the Akizu lab choose to work in any of our multiple ongoing projects, and as they become proficient with organizing, planning, and executing their experiments, we encourage them to be creative and test new scientifically relevant ideas.

Most projects involve aspects of modeling with pluripotent stem cells, neuronal culture and engraftments working with animal models, high throughput DNA/RNA sequencing, microscopy, metabolomics, and proteomics.

Students receive training to improve their technical skills in our experimental systems, but also to improve their critical scientific reading, writing, and oral presentation skills. We discuss our results and research articles that we find interesting on an everyday basis and in lab meetings, and we encourage students to attend and present their work in at least one relevant meeting per year. Likewise, students actively participate in preparing and submitting research articles to scientific journals and preparing successful grant applications.

If you are a student in a PhD, MD/PhD and VMD/PhD program and our lab sounds like a good fit for your career development, contact Naiara Akizu to set up a time to meet.

We have multiple exciting rotation projects!

• Develop strategies to engraft human neural cells in animal models to study disease mechanisms of neurological disorders that are poorly reproduced in those models and to test cell replacement therapies for neurodegenerative disorders
• Establish in vitro pluripotent stem cell diferentiation to upper motoneuron models to study motoneuron diseases
• Analyze AMPD2 isoform specific functions.

Postdoctoral fellows in the Akizu Lab will find multiple opportunities to develop as scientists while enjoying their research.

Postdocs in our lab choose to work in two of our ongoing projects and are strongly encouraged to develop, in parallel, at least one new project that they may be interested in following up in their future scientific careers.

Fellows are trained as required in research areas and experimental approaches that we work on, but we welcome any expertise that they bring to the Lab especially related to behavioral studies, electrophysiology, RNA and protein biology, and computational biology.

In addition to the lab work, fellows in the Akizu Lab are expected to improve their writing and presentation skills by preparing grants, scientific articles, and poster and oral presentations. They are encouraged to attend and present their work in scientifically relevant meetings and expected to participate in our fun, weekly lab meetings, which altogether contribute to the achievement of career developmental goals.

If you recently obtained an MD or PhD (or equivalent) degree less than a year ago and are interested in pursuing a postdoctoral study in the Akizu Lab, please send a cover letter, your CV and the names and contact information for three references to Naiara Akizu.