PhD Position on Phage Ecology in Microbial Communities

Are you interested by phages and microbial communities, and in search of a PhD place that mixes innovative experimental and computational methods? The Gralka and Mulla teams (A-LIFE & AIMMS, VU Amsterdam) are recruiting for a fully-funded 4-year PhD place. Supreme candidates ought to have an curiosity in elementary questions in microbiology and microbial ecology.

Location: AMSTERDAM
FTE: 1 – 1

Job description

Microbial communities are important to the functioning of ecosystems, from the oceans to the human intestine. Inside these communities, phages infect huge numbers of micro organism day by day and outnumber micro organism about 10 to 1. At the moment, we lack a quantitative understanding for the way phages influence neighborhood composition and performance, and conversely, how a fancy neighborhood context shapes the motion of phages on their particular hosts.

On this PhD venture, you’ll examine marine micro organism and their phages in isolation and in communities, from easy artificial communities to enrichments of pure communities. Combining high-throughput characterization strategies and state-of-the-art bioreactor expertise with metagenomic sequencing and mathematical modelling, your analysis will result in a quantitative understanding of the results of phages on microbial communities and the ecosystem capabilities they supply. Past a greater understanding of phage-bacteria interactions in marine microbial communities, this venture may even yield insights and strategies that might be relevant to different environments corresponding to soils and industrially related communities (wastewater remedy, meals microbiology), in addition to for phage remedy to deal with antibiotic resistant bacterial infections.

Your duties

• create and quantitatively characterize a phage financial institution for key marine micro organism
• measure the results of phage an infection in numerous neighborhood and environmental contexts
• get hold of and analyze amplicon and metagenomic sequencing information
• non-compulsory: assemble mathematical (kinetic) fashions of phage-bacteria interactions in advanced communities
• help in instructing, together with the supervision of BSc and MSc internship college students
• talk your analysis in native and worldwide conferences
• write a dissertation resulting in a PhD diploma in direction of the tip of the 4-year venture

Necessities

This venture is extremely interdisciplinary; excellent candidates ought to have a subset of the required expertise (microbiological/phage laboratory expertise, programming, modelling, bioinformatics) and a powerful willingness to be taught new expertise.

• you’ve a MSc or equal diploma in methods biology, (micro)biology, (bio)physics, or an analogous discipline
• you’ve good experimental expertise, and ideally expertise with primary microbiological laboratory expertise
• you’ve expertise with programming (e.g., Python, Mathematica or R) 
• glorious capacity to speak in each spoken and written English

What are we providing?

A difficult place in a socially concerned group. The wage might be in accordance with college rules for tutorial personnel and quantities €2,541 (PhD) per 30 days through the first 12 months and will increase to €3,247 (PhD) per 30 days through the fourth 12 months, primarily based on a full-time employment. The job profile: is predicated on the college job rating system and is vacant for not less than 1 FTE.

The appointment will initially be for 1 12 months. After a passable analysis of the preliminary appointment, the contract might be prolonged for a length of 4 years.
Moreover, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam presents glorious fringe advantages and numerous schemes and rules to advertise a very good work/life stability, corresponding to:

• a most of 41 days of annual depart primarily based on full-time employment
• 8% vacation allowance and eight.3% end-of-year bonus
• baby daycare amenities obtainable on campus
• non-compulsory mannequin for designing a personalised advantages bundle

About Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam

The ambition of Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam is obvious: to contribute to a greater world by excellent schooling and ground-breaking analysis. We try to be a college the place private improvement and dedication to society play a number one position. A college the place individuals from completely different disciplines and backgrounds collaborate to realize improvements and to generate new information. Our instructing and analysis embody all the spectrum of educational endeavor – from the humanities, the social sciences and the pure sciences by to the life sciences and the medical sciences.

Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam is house to greater than 31,000 college students. We make use of over 5,000 people. The VU campus is definitely accessible and situated within the coronary heart of Amsterdam’s Zuidas district, a very inspiring surroundings for instructing and analysis.

Variety
We’re an inclusive college neighborhood. Variety is one among our most necessary values. We imagine that participating in worldwide actions and welcoming college students and employees from all kinds of backgrounds enhances the standard of our schooling and analysis. We’re all the time in search of individuals who can enrich our world with their very own distinctive views and experiences.

The College of Science
Working on the College of Science means working along with college students, PhD candidates and scientists who’re centered on their self-discipline, but even have a broad view of the world. We’re pleased with the collegial working surroundings inside the college, which is characterised by an bold and pragmatic perspective with dedication to the larger image. On the College of Science, scientists and college students work on elementary and complicated social points for a sustainable and wholesome future. From forest fires to huge information, from weight problems to malnutrition, from genetics to prescription drugs and from molecules to the moon: our instructing and analysis cowl the total breadth of the pure sciences. Scientific instructing and analysis is extremely experimental, technical, computational and interdisciplinary in nature. Because of this we collaborate extensively with main analysis institutes and business. The school has over 11,000 college students finding out throughout 40 academic programmes and employs over 1,600 employees unfold over 10 scientific departments, making us the biggest science college within the Netherlands.

In regards to the division, institute, venture
The mission of A-LIFE is to advance the basic understanding of the interaction between life and its surroundings by revolutionary and curiosity-driven science. The division seeks to attach properties and emergent behaviours from micro to world scales, from molecules to ecosystems, together with human populations. We intention to encourage our college students and apply our experience to form a sustainable future and assist wholesome dwelling.

Software
Deliberate beginning date

: Fall 2023

Are you interested by this place? 

Please add the under talked about paperwork

• a letter wherein you describe your skills and motiviation
• an in depth curriculum vitae with two or three references
• an inventory of grades, TOEFL and/or IETLS scores (if obtainable)

and apply through the appliance button till 30/09/2023. 

Functions acquired by e-mail is not going to be processed.

Emptiness questions
When you have any questions relating to this emptiness, you could contact:

Identify: Dr Matti Gralka
Place: Assistant Professor
E-mail: [email protected]