Description

Description
Assistant Professor of Reproductive Sciences (in Obstetrics and Gynecology) at the Columbia University Medical Center

Build what reproductive medicine needs next.

The Columbia University Fertility Center is seeking an exceptional early-career scientist, engineer, physician-scientist, or technologist to join our research and development team as junior faculty.

This is not a conventional laboratory position centered on a single technique, platform, or scientific question.

Our laboratory starts somewhere different: with important problems in patient care that should be solvable but are not yet solved.

We identify unmet needs in reproductive medicine where a new technology could meaningfully improve patient care, safety, access, efficiency, or outcomes. We then work from first principles to develop a solution, build the initial prototype, establish proof of concept, rigorously validate the technology, and ultimately translate successful innovations into clinical practice.

The goal is not simply to study problems. The goal is to solve them.

Our work has already led to technologies spanning artificial intelligence, robotics, microfluidics, genomics, diagnostics, laboratory automation, remote monitoring, and novel approaches to patient care. Examples include the STAR System for AI-enabled detection and recovery of extremely rare sperm; STORK, a rapid and lower-cost genetic test for pregnancy loss; APRIL, a robotic system designed to improve the precision of embryo-culture preparation; at-home blood and semen collection technologies; and systems designed to improve monitoring and safety of cryopreserved eggs, sperm, and embryos. 

We are looking for someone who wants to help invent what comes next.

The opportunity

The successful candidate will become a core member of a highly collaborative translational R&D program embedded within a major academic fertility center.

Rather than being handed a narrowly defined project, the faculty member will have the opportunity to participate across the entire innovation cycle:

Identify → Invent → Build → Test → Validate → Translate

You will work directly with clinicians, scientists, embryologists, engineers, computational researchers, industry partners, and patients to understand problems deeply and develop practical solutions.

A project might begin with a question such as:

Why does this part of fertility care still work this way?

What currently limits our ability to diagnose or treat this problem?

Could a new assay, device, algorithm, robotic system, imaging platform, or workflow solve it?

And then:

Can we build it?

What you will do

The faculty member will:

• Identify high-impact unmet needs in reproductive medicine and fertility care.
• Translate clinical problems into scientifically and technically tractable research questions.
• Conceive and develop new technologies, assays, devices, computational approaches, and experimental platforms.
• Rapidly develop prototypes and proof-of-principle studies.
• Design rigorous experiments to determine whether promising ideas actually work.
• Lead validation studies and help move successful technologies toward clinical implementation.
• Draw upon technologies from fields outside reproductive medicine when they offer a solution to an important clinical problem.
• Collaborate closely with physicians, embryologists, molecular biologists, engineers, computer scientists, data scientists, and external technology partners.
• Build multidisciplinary teams around particularly promising ideas.
• Mentor students, trainees, research staff, and collaborators.
• Publish meaningful scientific work and present findings nationally and internationally.
• Pursue extramural funding and participate in development of intellectual property where appropriate.
• Help create a culture in which ambitious ideas are pursued with scientific rigor, intellectual openness, urgency, and a focus on real-world impact.
   

Who we are looking for

There is deliberately no single required scientific specialty for this position.

The best candidate may come from reproductive biology, molecular biology, bioengineering, biomedical engineering, computer science, artificial intelligence, robotics, physics, genomics, diagnostics, microfluidics, imaging, or another field entirely.

What matters more is how you think.

We are looking for someone who:

• Is deeply curious and intellectually adventurous.
• Sees problems and instinctively begins thinking about how they might be solved.
• Is comfortable entering fields outside their formal training and learning rapidly.
• Can move between conceptual thinking and hands-on experimentation.
• Enjoys building and testing things rather than stopping at an interesting hypothesis.
• Is scientifically rigorous but not constrained by traditional disciplinary boundaries.
• Is comfortable with projects that initially have no obvious solution.
• Can distinguish an interesting technology from one that addresses an important clinical need.
• Thrives in highly collaborative, multidisciplinary environments.
• Has the persistence to take an idea through repeated cycles of failure, redesign, and improvement.
• Ultimately measures success not only by publications, but by whether the work changes what is possible for patients.

We are particularly interested in candidates who bring capabilities or ways of thinking that do not already exist within our field.

Why Columbia Fertility?

The position offers something uncommon: the ability to develop new technology inside the clinical environment in which it is intended to be used.

Our R&D program is closely integrated with physicians, embryologists, patients, clinical laboratories, and the day-to-day practice of reproductive medicine. Problems can therefore be identified directly from clinical care, prototypes can be developed with input from the people who will ultimately use them, and promising technologies can progress from concept toward real-world validation and deployment.

The environment is intentionally entrepreneurial, interdisciplinary, and ambitious.

The goals of the projects is to develop better ways of caring for patients, improving outcomes, and helping patients have success when it was previously impossible.

The person we hope will join us

We are looking for someone who, when confronted with a difficult and important problem, does not simply say:

“That is an interesting research question.”

They think:

“There must be a way to solve this.”

And then they start figuring out how.

We are particularly interested in candidates who bring capabilities or ways of thinking that do not already exist within our field.

All interested candidates must apply directly at: https://apply.interfolio.com/195075

Requirements

Qualifications

• A PhD, MD, MD/PhD, or equivalent doctoral degree in a relevant scientific, engineering, computational, or medical discipline.
• A strong record of scientific achievement appropriate to career stage.
• Evidence of creativity, independence, and rigorous experimental thinking.
• Demonstrated ability to develop new methods, technologies, systems, or approaches is highly desirable.
• Strong communication and collaborative skills.
• A commitment to translating scientific and technological innovation into meaningful improvements in patient care.
• Prior experience in reproductive medicine is welcome but not required.