WOC - Research Biologist

Description:

This position serves as Without Compensation Research Assistant within the Office of Research and Development (ORD). The VA Research Program strives to promote Veteran-centered care to improve patient experiences and outcomes across VA healthcare and community settings, and to advance value-driven care by providing Veterans the highest quality care at the lowest financial burden. Please note, there is no pay associated with this position.

Requirements:

To qualify for this position, applicants must meet all requirements by the closing date of this announcement, 09/22/2025.

• Experience: You must possess general experience in (1) any type of work that includes contact the design and execute biochemical methods such as extraction of RNA and protein, quantification, RT qPCR, Western Blot; (2) isolation and characterization of primary cultures of vascular smooth muscle cells from mice aorta; (3) generating and characterizing genetically modified animal models to study human diseases; (4) create comprehensive documents, technical reports, and presentations, as well as written standard operating procedure documents, inventories, and laboratory records; and (5) . OR,
• Education: You must possess a degree from an accredited college or university in biological sciences, agriculture, natural resource management, chemistry, or related disciplines appropriate to the position . OR,
• Combination: Applicants may also combine education and experience to qualify at this level. You must have a combination of experience and education.

You will be rated on the following Competencies for this position:

• Analytical Reasoning
• Critical Thinking
• Research
• Technical Competence

Experience refers to paid and unpaid experience, including volunteer work done through National Service programs (e.g., Peace Corps, AmeriCorps) and other organizations (e.g., professional; philanthropic; religions; spiritual; community; student; social). Volunteer work helps build critical competencies, knowledge, and skills and can provide valuable training and experience that translates directly to paid employment. You will receive credit for all qualifying experience, including volunteer experience.

Note : A full year of work is considered to be 35-40 hours of work per week. Part-time experience will be credited on the basis of time actually spent in appropriate activities. Applicants wishing to receive credit for such experience must indicate clearly the nature of their duties and responsibilities in each position and the number of hours a week spent in such employment.

Physical Requirements: The work is predominantly sedentary. Typically, the employee sits comfortably to do the work. However, there will be some walking, standing, bending and carrying of items of moderate weight such as large binders, banker style file boxes, meeting materials, papers, books or small parts. Hand and eye coordination for delicate testing procedures may be the only special physical demand required to perform the work.

For more information on these qualification standards, please visit the United States Office of Personnel Management's website at https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/classification-qualifications/general-schedule-qualification-standards/ .