Biology Expert - Masters/PhD

About the role

We are seeking Life Sciences Subject Matter Experts to develop advanced scientific reasoning tasks for LifeSciBench. Unlike coding-focused benchmarks, this role emphasizes deep biological knowledge, scientific interpretation, and rigorous reasoning. You will create challenging questions based on realistic scientific scenarios, experimental results, biological data, figures, literature-style evidence, and research problems. This is a non-code benchmark: tasks are not executed, and no programming is required.

Who this is for: Life scientists who want to author rigorous scientific-reasoning problems with objectively defensible answers — no coding involved. If your strength is interpreting experiments, spotting ambiguity, and constructing questions that reward synthesis over recall, this is the fit.

Who this isn't for: If you want to build tasks where agents write and execute code, see GeneBench Pro (genomics), Agentic Life Sciences (broad life-sciences workflows), or Terminal Bench Science (cross-STEM terminal tasks).

Key Responsibilities:

• Design novel, challenging life sciences problems requiring advanced scientific reasoning.

• Create tasks grounded in realistic research scenarios, experiments, biological datasets, figures, sequences, structures, or scientific evidence.

• Develop clear questions with well-defined and objectively defensible answers.

• Write rigorous expert reference answers explaining the scientific reasoning required.

• Ensure tasks require synthesis and interpretation rather than simple factual recall.

• Validate all biological claims, calculations, assumptions, and conclusions.

• Identify ambiguity, alternative scientifically valid interpretations, and insufficiently constrained questions.

• Create tasks capable of distinguishing frontier AI models based on scientific reasoning ability.

• Ensure outputs are clearly documented and reproducible where applicable.

• Maintain high quality and throughput while incorporating reviewer feedback.

Note on inputs: Tasks may involve scientific text, structured data, sequences, experimental results, and other scientific evidence depending on project requirements. 

Requirements:  

• Ph.D., postdoctoral experience, or equivalent advanced research experience in the Life Sciences.

• Strong expertise in at least one biological discipline.

• Demonstrated ability to interpret scientific experiments, data, and research findings. Relevant backgrounds include:

• Molecular Biology

• Genetics and Genomics

• Cell Biology

• Biochemistry

• Neuroscience

• Microbiology

• Immunology

• Evolutionary Biology

• Ecology

• Structural Biology

• Biophysics

• Developmental Biology

• Cancer Biology

• Pharmacology or related disciplines

Preferred Qualifications:  

• Experience designing graduate-level scientific problems or assessments.

• Strong familiarity with experimental design and interpretation.

• Experience reviewing scientific manuscripts or research.

• Ability to translate complex scientific concepts into precise, self-contained problems.

• Experience evaluating LLM-generated scientific responses.

Bonus Points For:

• Publications in strong peer-reviewed journals or conferences.

• Teaching or mentoring experience at the graduate level.

• Experience with AI/ML evaluation datasets.