A global higher education leader in innovative teaching, research and public service, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill consistently ranks as one of the nation’s top public universities and is among is the top ten research universities in the nation for federal research expenditures as well as for federally funded social and behavioral sciences research and development.

Here at Carolina, our highly skilled postdocs play a vital role in our research enterprise and towards our overall commitment to research excellence. Across many disciplines, postdocs contribute to the intellectual vitality of the University. They provide innovative ideas and perspectives, foster a stimulating research environment and advance knowledge within their fields. Postdocs are crucial members of our scientific research workforce, contributors to our research outputs and an important reason why Carolina is one of the leading public research institutions in the country.

UNC-Chapel Hill offers postdocs comprehensive medical and vision coverage, paid leave, and benefits and services that support professional development and a healthy work/life balance. Chapel Hill regularly ranks as one of the best college towns and best places to live in the United States, a reputation guided by the diverse social, cultural, recreation and professional opportunities that span the campus and community.

The Department of Biology at UNC-Chapel Hill is dedicated to the discovery and dissemination of new and existing knowledge in the broad discipline of Biology by maintaining a high-quality faculty who integrate cutting-edge research and student-focused teaching.

We are one of the largest academic departments in the College of Arts and Sciences. We have over 2,800 majors and we enroll over 5,000 undergraduate students in our classes each year. Our average total annual expenditures exceed $24 million, with nearly half of that coming from grant sponsored research. The department is composed of 50 tenure-track faculty, 10 teaching faculty, 8 research faculty, and numerous active adjunct and emeritus faculty. We currently have 50 graduate students, 40 post-docs and employ approximately 60 additional graduate and undergraduate students from across the university to assist in our teaching and research missions. Our mission is supported by an administrative and technical staff of 20, with an additional 25 staff directly supporting research.

The Jason Reed lab researches various aspects of plant development, including hormonal control of flower maturation. The project is to study how hormones control rapid but transient stamen filament growth in Arabidopsis, and how filament growth is coordinated with pollen release. Time-lapse confocal microscopy, single-nucleus RNA-Seq, and fluorescent reporter genes will be used to reconstruct three-dimensional cellular anatomy, growth, and differentiation in rapidly growing stamen filaments. Comparisons of wild type and mutants with decreased or increased hormone responses and filament growth will provide insight into how the hormones act. Biophysical, hormonal, and genetic manipulations will probe mechanisms that couple filament growth with the jasmonate production needed for anther dehiscence.

Collaborators on this project include the Jason Reed lab at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA (hormonal control of flower maturation); the Daniel Kierzkowski lab at Université de Montréal, Canada (live imaging of anatomy and growth); and the Bastiaan Bargmann and Clay Wright labs at Virginia Tech, USA (auxin transcriptional response systems to improve plants through synthetic biology approaches).