UiT The Arctic University of Norway has established «The Arctic MSCA-PF program» (uit.no/project/arcticmsca) to recruit excellent young researchers planning to apply for a Marie Skƚodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellowship (MSCA-PF) to pursue a career in research. We invite applications from promising young researchers within the field of Infection Biology, Microbiology and Chemical Biology. The selected candidate will write a proposal for a 24-month MSCA-PF at UiT together with Associate Professor Christian S. Lentz. This is an opportunity to accelerate your research career while living in the urban research city of Tromsø, uniquely located at the top of the world surrounded by some of Europe’s last pristine wild nature.

This call is one of 70 from pre-selected supervisors at UiT The Arctic University of Norway through the “Arctic MSCA-PF program”. Successful postdoc candidates will be invited for a three-day MSCA-PF symposium June 4-6, 2024 (hybrid physical/digital event, see details at uit.no/project/arcticmsca/program-structure). At this event, the candidates will present their past research achievements, discuss future plans with their potential supervisor and learn how to write a successful MSCA-PF application. The selected candidates will, jointly with the supervisor, write the MSCA-PF application by the deadline of September 11, 2024.

In this call we search for talented, young researchers within the field of Infection Biology, Microbiology and Chemical Biology as presented by Associate Professor Lentz:

We are an innovative, open-minded, interdisciplinary team of scientists studying how bacterial pathogens adapt during infection, cause disease and survive exposure to antimicrobials. In particular, we combine chemical tool development and molecular imaging with microbiological techniques, single-cell approaches and in vivo and organoid-based infection models. One focus area of our research is to understand how cell individuality and cooperativity collectively shape virulence and antibiotic resilience of bacterial cell populations. We therefore develop and apply fluorescent probes that visualize different phenotypic traits and molecular factors such as specific enzymes, nutrient uptake, virulence factors or structural elements of the cell envelope to generate phenotypic profiles of living single cells. To deduce their function, we purify differentially labelled cells via FACS-sorting and subject them to downstream analyses ranging from single-cell growth and antimicrobial susceptibility assays to infection assays and ´omics´ studies done with purified subpopulations. We use these insights to develop innovative antimicrobial treatment strategies to target and chemical probes or sensors for diagnostic applications that are urgently needed in times of emerging drug resistance.  

Please send your CV (max 3 pages) and describe a research project that will strengthen and complement the presented research (max 2 pages) to christian.s.lentz@uit.no by Feb 16th 2024. Mark your application "Arctic MSCA". Successful candidates will be contacted in late March 2024.