Postdoctoral Associate — Intravital Lung Imaging of Alveolar Stem Cell Plasticity

The Chioccioli Lab at Yale School of Medicine (Departments of Genetics and Comparative Medicine) is seeking a highly motivated Postdoctoral Associate to lead its intravital imaging programme in the living mouse lung.

We study alveolar stem cell plasticity. After injury, AT2 stem cells generate transient intermediate progenitor cells (IPCs). These either restore the alveolus or persist in disease states, which makes IPCs a strong candidate cell of origin for chronic lung disease, including fibrosis and lung adenocarcinoma. Our earlier intravital work showed that AT2 stem cells migrate between alveoli to repair injured tissue (Chioccioli et al., Developmental Cell 2024, highlighted in Science).

The postdoc will use our permanent lung window surgery and our state-of-the-art three-photon intravital microscope to image the same alveolar regions over days to weeks in live, breathing mice. The aim is to follow how IPCs emerge, move and choose their fate during repair, fibrosis and early KRAS-driven transformation. The position is funded by an NIH/NHLBI R01 and sits within a strong collaborative network at Yale, including the Yale Stem Cell Center, the Wu Tsai Institute and the Yale SPORE in Lung Cancer.

Responsibilities

• Perform permanent lung window implantation and longitudinal 3-photon intravital imaging in lineage-traced mouse models of lung injury and tumour initiation
• Develop and optimise the imaging pipeline, including window design, motion correction and long-term re-registration of the same fields
• Quantify cell behaviours such as migration, division and fate transitions
• Integrate imaging results with lineage tracing, histology and the lab's single-nucleus multiome data
• Publish first-author papers, present at meetings, and train junior lab members in surgery and imaging

Required qualifications

• PhD, MD or MD/PhD in cell biology, stem cell or developmental biology, biophysics, biomedical engineering or a related field, completed or expected within 6 months
• Hands-on experience with mouse models, including rodent survival surgery
• Experience with multiphoton (2P or 3P) or intravital microscopy
• Quantitative image analysis skills (e.g., Imaris, Fiji, Python or MATLAB)
• Strong communication skills and the ability to work both independently and in a team

Preferred qualifications

• Experience with imaging windows (lung, mammary, abdominal or cranial)
• Background in lung biology, lineage tracing or regeneration
• A record of first-author publication

Salary: Based on experience, following NIH NRSA / Yale postdoctoral scales (approx. $63,480–$77,076/year), plus full Yale benefits.
To apply: Please send a CV, a cover letter describing your research interests and career goals, and contact information for three references to Dr. Maurizio Chioccioli at  View email address on nature.com . Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis. More about the lab: chiocciolilab.com.
Yale University is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action employer.