Mayo Clinic in Florida invites applications for an open-rank faculty position for an accomplished and innovative T-Cell Engineering Scientist to join the expanding Cell Therapy Discovery and Translational Science Program. This strategic recruitment supports Mayo Clinic’s commitment to advancing next-generation engineered T-cell therapies for cancer and selected immune-mediated diseases.
We seek a highly creative investigator with expertise in T-cell engineering, CAR-T development, TCR-based therapies, and Tumor-Infiltrating Lymphocyte (TIL) platforms to develop and translate novel cellular immunotherapy strategies. The successful candidate will lead efforts to identify and validate new T-cell targets, engineer enhanced CAR and TCR constructs, and optimize TIL-based therapeutic approaches with improved specificity, persistence, safety, and efficacy.
This role will play a central part in accelerating translational immune cell therapy efforts, bridging discovery science with IND-enabling development and early-phase clinical trials.
Strategic Role and Scientific Focus
The T-Cell Engineering Scientist will:
- Lead discovery and validation of novel targets for CAR-T, TCR-engineered T cells, and TIL-based therapies across hematologic malignancies and solid tumors.
- Develop strategies to enhance TIL expansion, persistence, functional fitness, and tumor reactivity, including genetic modification approaches to overcome exhaustion and immunosuppressive tumor microenvironments.
- Engineer and optimize CAR constructs, co-stimulatory domains, synthetic circuits, safety switches, and multiplex gene editing strategies to enhance therapeutic performance.
- Advance next-generation approaches such as armored CAR-T cells, logic-gated systems, dual-target strategies, universal/allogeneic platforms, and genetically enhanced TIL therapies.
- Collaborate closely with genome editing scientists, tumor immunologists, translational investigators, GMP manufacturing teams, and clinical trial leaders to move engineered T-cell therapies into clinical testing.
- Contribute to building scalable discovery pipelines for antigen identification, functional screening, and preclinical validation.
- Participate in multidisciplinary team science initiatives across Mayo Clinic campuses.
The successful candidate will help shape an integrated T-cell therapy strategy encompassing CAR-T, TCR, and TIL platforms, strengthening Mayo Clinic Florida’s leadership in immune cell therapy innovation.
Research Environment
Mayo Clinic Florida provides a collaborative, multidisciplinary academic medical center environment with strategic investment in cancer immunotherapy and cell therapy translation. Faculty benefit from:
- Established CAR-T and immune cell therapy clinical programs
- Growing infrastructure supporting TIL therapy development and clinical implementation
- State-of-the-art cell manufacturing and GMP facilities
- Institutional core resources including genomics, single-cell sequencing, proteomics, bioinformatics, and advanced imaging
- Disease-focused research centers supporting oncology and immune-mediated disease programs
- Cross-campus collaboration opportunities with Mayo Clinic in Minnesota and Arizona
- Dedicated support for regulatory strategy, IND-enabling studies, and early-phase clinical trial development
The selected candidate will join a rapidly expanding ecosystem designed to accelerate discovery-to-clinic translation of engineered T-cell therapies.
