[Hiring] Seeking freelancer(s) for a project involving oligonucleotide synthesis

Summary:

- work anywhere (remote)
- work whenever (your choice)
- design and plan all chemistry for a machine that performs oligonucleotide synthesis

**Intro**: We are a small group working on large-scale parallel oligonucleotide synthesis using phosphoramidites. We're designing and building a machine to facilitate this. We have alternative designs that we are considering, and many of the design questions (or their answers) should be decided by the realities of the chemistry. We're good at designing, building and programming machines, and now we're seeking assistance with all things chemistry. You will be responsible for providing insight and "owning" the project's chemistry, which will be entirely subject to your expertise, whim and fancy.

**The work**: You will be joining the team as a consultant, contractor or freelancer. You can do your work anywhere, and you can work whenever you want. The team communicates asynchronously on IRC, so you'll be joining an IRC channel and also reviewing the daily "backlog" of communication to see if you can provide expertise anywhere.

You will be responsible for determining and documenting all reagent storage conditions and the materials of the storage environments; reaction conditions and tolerances; verifying the chemistry is sane; participating in mechanical design discussions so that chemistry problems or solutions can be incorporated into the engineering; finding and comparing suppliers; exploring and documenting different options for reactions; identifying and documenting techniques for debugging different stages of the machinery such as determining yield or cleanup procedures; providing options for linkers and then linker cleaving.

We would also like to consider projects in the future like "verifying the chemistry by performing the reactions yourself in similar conditions", but at the moment we're interested primarily in assistance with research, planning, documentation and design. Along these lines, we are entirely open to your proposals regarding either more specific or perhaps more limited contributions to the project.

**Compensation**: Very flexible on the structure or nature of the compensation. Hourly OK, milestone payments OK, other schedules OK. Upfront payments also OK. You'll be paid in US dollars (USD) or bitcoin (BTC).

**Travel**: None, unless you find it necessary and you want to.

**Nice-to-haves**: Not necessary but it would be great if you are already familiar with concepts and techniques such as:

- oligonucleotide synthesis
- phosphoramidites, phosphotriesters, phosphodiesters, and phosphorylation in general
- azole catalysts (tetrazole and its derivatives)
- detritylation
- many types of photocleavable protecting groups
- photopolymers, PDMS, SU-8, etc.
- nucleotides
- emulsions

Send your resume and/or proposals to kanzure@gmail.com or join us on IRC: irc.freenode.net ##hplusroadmap