Job Description

Position Summary

The University of South Florida seeks an experienced scientist to provide scientific, technical, and operational leadership for its Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) Core Facility. The NMR Core supports multidisciplinary research across chemistry, biochemistry, molecular biology, materials science, pharmaceutical sciences, engineering, medicine, and related fields.

The NMR Core Facility Director will lead the facility as a modern, research-enabling shared resource consistent with the expectations of an AAU research university. The Director is responsible for maintaining a high-performing NMR instrumentation portfolio; providing advanced scientific consultation and experimental support; training users; ensuring reliable and safe facility operations; managing scheduling, billing, and cost recovery; and developing a long-term strategy for instrumentation renewal and expansion.

A central expectation of the position is to enable and expand research, rather than simply maintain instrumentation. The Director will actively engage investigators in experimental design, development of new NMR capabilities, preparation of grant proposals, and adoption of advanced NMR methods that increase the scientific impact and competitiveness of USF research.

Leadership Expectations

The NMR Core Facility Director is expected to function as a scientific partner to the USF research community. The position therefore requires a combination of deep NMR expertise, service orientation, operational discipline, and entrepreneurial scientific leadership.

The successful Director should be visible and engaged with faculty, understand emerging research needs across the university, identify opportunities where NMR can enable new scholarship and external funding, and continually develop the facility's capabilities in response to those needs.

The Director should also establish a culture in which the Core is viewed not simply as a collection of instruments, but as a university research infrastructure platform that increases investigator productivity, supports interdisciplinary collaboration, strengthens grant competitiveness, trains students and researchers, and enables scientific discovery.

Responsibilities

Scientific and Technical Leadership - 30%

• Provide expert scientific leadership for solution-state and, where applicable, solid-state NMR spectroscopy.
• Advise faculty, postdoctoral researchers, graduate students, and other users regarding experimental design, sample preparation, pulse-sequence selection, data acquisition, processing, interpretation, and troubleshooting.
• Develop and implement advanced NMR methodologies appropriate to the evolving research needs of USF investigators.
• Support applications including molecular structure determination, reaction monitoring, molecular dynamics, metabolomics, biomolecular characterization, materials characterization, diffusion measurements, quantitative NMR, variable-temperature studies, and multinuclear spectroscopy.
• Maintain current expertise in emerging NMR instrumentation, probes, cryogenic technologies, pulse sequences, automation, software, and data-analysis methodologies.

Instrumentation and Facility Operations - 25%

• Oversee day-to-day operation and performance of the NMR instrumentation portfolio, including superconducting magnets, consoles, probes, autosamplers, variable-temperature systems, cryogenic systems, workstations, and associated infrastructure.
• Establish and maintain rigorous preventive-maintenance and quality-control programs.
• Diagnose instrument problems and coordinate repairs with vendors and university technical personnel.
• Manage magnet cryogens, magnet performance, probe maintenance, software upgrades, computer systems, data storage, and related infrastructure.
• Establish performance benchmarks and document instrument uptime, utilization, downtime, and maintenance history.
• Develop contingency and continuity plans for critical instrumentation and infrastructure failures.

User Training and Research Support - 15%

• Develop a structured user-training and certification program appropriate to different levels of instrument access.
• Train users in instrument operation, NMR theory, experimental design, data processing, and facility safety.
• Establish clear criteria for independent instrument operation and advanced-user privileges.
• Provide hands-on assistance for technically demanding experiments.
• Promote appropriate acknowledgement and co-authorship practices when facility personnel make substantive intellectual contributions to research.
• Create workshops, seminars, short courses, and other educational activities that expand NMR expertise across the university.

Core Facility Administration and Financial Management - 15%

• Operate the NMR Core as a professionally managed shared research facility with transparent and equitable access.
• Manage instrument scheduling, user authorization, service requests, usage tracking, and billing through USF-approved core-facility management systems such as iLab or successor platforms.
• Work with appropriate fiscal personnel to ensure accurate and timely invoicing and reconciliation of facility revenue.
• Develop and periodically review internal, external-academic, and commercial user rates consistent with federal cost-accounting requirements and USF policy.
• Develop annual operating budgets and forecasts for service contracts, cryogens, supplies, repairs, staffing, software, and equipment replacement.
• Monitor facility revenue, expenditures, subsidies, utilization, and cost recovery.
• Provide regular performance reports including utilization, instrument uptime, user base, financial performance, publications, grant support, and other research-impact metrics.

Strategic Development and Research Growth - 10%

• Develop a 3-5-year strategic plan for the NMR Core, including instrumentation renewal, emerging capabilities, staffing, space, and infrastructure requirements.
• Maintain an equipment lifecycle and capital-renewal plan that anticipates major upgrades and replacement needs.
• Work proactively with faculty to identify opportunities for major instrumentation proposals, including NSF Major Research Instrumentation and NIH Shared Instrumentation programs and other federal, state, foundation, and industry opportunities.
• Contribute technical language, specifications, utilization data, management plans, and other materials for grant proposals involving NMR instrumentation.
• Build collaborations across USF colleges, centers, institutes, hospitals, and external research partners.
• Develop relationships with regional academic institutions and industry that expand utilization and establish the NMR Core as a regional research resource.

Safety, Compliance, and Quality Assurance - 5%

• Ensure compliance with university, federal, and applicable professional requirements governing laboratory and NMR operations.
• Maintain appropriate safety procedures for superconducting magnets, cryogens, compressed gases, magnetic fields, chemical samples, and emergency situations.
• Coordinate with USF Environmental Health and Safety and other appropriate offices.
• Maintain facility SOPs, training records, emergency procedures, equipment documentation, and quality-control records.
• Promote a culture of safety, professionalism, reproducibility, and responsible
  research conduct.

Qualifications

Minimum Qualifications

• Ph.D. in Chemistry, Biochemistry, Chemical Engineering, Materials Science, Pharmaceutical Sciences, Biophysics, or a closely related field.
• Five years of postdoctoral, industrial, or professional experience utilizing modern NMR spectroscopy including significant hands-on experience with high-field NMR instrumentation.
• Significant experience operating and supporting high-field NMR instrumentation.
• Experience training and supporting researchers within a shared research environment.

Preferred Qualifications

• Demonstrated experience managing teams and providing effective leadership including supervising scientific and technical staff
• Experience in an R1/AAU research university, national laboratory, pharmaceutical/biotechnology company, or comparable research-intensive environment.
• Extensive experience with Bruker and/or JEOL high-field NMR platforms.
• Expertise with TopSpin, Mnova and related NMR processing and analysis software.
• Experience with advanced applications such as biomolecular NMR, metabolomics, solid-state NMR, quantitative NMR, diffusion spectroscopy, reaction monitoring, or materials characterization.
• Experience developing user fees and managing cost-recovery research facilities.
• Experience with iLab or comparable core-facility management systems.
• Demonstrated participation in major instrumentation or shared-instrumentation grant proposals.
• Demonstrated success developing new research capabilities or expanding the user base of a shared research facility.