Postdoctoral Researcher: Structural Biology

UHN is Canada’s #1 hospital and the world’s #1 publicly funded hospital. With 10 sites and more than 44,000 TeamUHN members, UHN consists of Toronto General Hospital, Toronto Western Hospital, Princess Margaret Cancer Centre, Toronto Rehabilitation Institute, The Michener Institute of Education and West Park Healthcare Centre. As Canada's top research hospital, the scope of biomedical research and complexity of cases at UHN have made it a national and international source for discovery, education and patient care. UHN has the largest hospital-based research program in Canada, with major research in neurosciences, cardiology, transplantation, oncology, surgical innovation, infectious diseases, genomic medicine and rehabilitation medicine. UHN is a research hospital affiliated with the University of Toronto.

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Program: Mitacs Accelerate Umbrella - Target 2035 Fellows

Position Summary:
We are seeking a highly motivated Postdoctoral Researcher with experience in X-ray Crystallography to join an ambitious, data-driven drug discovery program at the interface of structural biology, chemical biology, and artificial intelligence. This role will play a central part in hit characterisation for LIGAND-AI, generating high-quality protein-ligand co-crystal structures that directly inform structure-based drug discovery research programs, the development of machine learning models and enable international benchmarking challenges.

The Postdoctoral Researcher will focus on structure determination of protein-ligand complexes spanning key biological pathways including epigenetics, ubiquitin signalling, gene regulation, and DNA repair. These structures will not only drive internal hit validation and SAR development but will also feed into global open science efforts and benchmarking initiatives such as CASP, helping define the next generation of AI-enabled drug discovery.

This is an exciting opportunity to work at the frontier of structural biology and AI, where experimentally rigorous crystallographic data are treated as first-class training data for machine learning. The successful candidate will contribute to a growing portfolio of high-impact structures designed to stress-test, validate, and improve LIGAND-AI predictions in real-world drug discovery settings.

The Postdoctoral Researcher will be embedded in a highly collaborative early-stage drug discovery team, working closely with medicinal chemists, computational scientists, machine learning experts, automation engineers, and biochemists. Together, the team integrates structure, chemistry, and data science to rapidly advance hit matter and generate benchmark-quality datasets with broad community value.

The positions offer a highly collaborative environment, access to state-of-the-art infrastructure, and the opportunity to contribute to research addressing a major unmet medical and societal need.

Appointment, Training Program, and Research Environment

This position is part of the Target 2035 Fellows program, supported through a Mitacs Accelerate Umbrella award. The appointment is a temporary full-time postdoctoral position for an initial one-year term, with the possibility of renewal for up to two additional years, subject to performance, funding availability, and program requirements.

The Postdoctoral Researcher will be based at University Health Network (UHN) within the Princess Margaret Cancer Centre research environment and will contribute to Target 2035, a global public-private partnership dedicated to accelerating early drug discovery through the open generation of high-quality protein-ligand interaction data for AI/ML.

Training will occur through close academic supervision, day-to-day integration within UHN research teams, and active participation in international, multidisciplinary collaborations spanning academia, industry, and technology partners. The role offers exceptional exposure to AI-native drug discovery, state-of-the-art structural biology infrastructure, and high-visibility scientific outputs.

Duties:

In addition to working alongside some of the most talented and inspiring healthcare professionals in the world, UHN offers a wide range of benefits, programs and perks. It is the comprehensiveness of these offerings that makes it a differentiating factor, allowing you to find value where it matters most to you, now and throughout your career at UHN.

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Please be advised that a Criminal Record Check may be required of the successful candidate. Should it be determined that any information provided by a candidate be misleading, inaccurate or incorrect, UHN reserves the right to discontinue with the consideration of their application.

UHN is an equal opportunity employer committed to an inclusive recruitment process and workplace. Requests for accommodation can be made at any stage of the recruitment process. Applicants need to make their requirements known.

We thank all applicants for their interest, however, only those selected for further consideration will be contacted.