Notice for a Research Grant under the ExpoAdvance- Advancing Aggregate Exposure to Chemicals in EU, financiado pela EFSA (Direct Service Contract OC-EFSA-ED-2022-04)

The conditions for opening the research grant call are as follows:

Scientific Area: Health or Biological Sciences, Chemistry, Bioinformatics

Admission Requirements:

Only applications that meet the following requirements, considered mandatory, will be considered:

• Degree in the areas of Health or Biological Sciences, Chemistry and related areas or Bioinformatics
• Students enrolled in courses in the scientific areas indicated above, aiming to consolidate their scientific training through the development of research work leading to obtaining the respective academic degree whether or not integrated into R&D projects.

The following requirements will be preference factors:

• Graduation or Post-graduation in bioinformatics

• Relevant and proven experience of more than 6 months (after graduation) in occupational health, toxicology, human biomonitoring or similar;

• Relevant experience in data analysis for NextGen sequencing, methylation, pathway analysis and nanotoxicology;

•  Experience in organizing data and information and preparing scientific production, including communications at conferences and articles in national or international peer-reviewed journals;

• Knowledge of English, spoken and written;

• Immediate availability.

Monthly maintenance allowance amount:

The monthly amount of the grant corresponds to €930.98 (nine hundred and thirty euros and ninety eight cents), the current value of the scholarships awarded by the Science and Technology Foundation for the same category (https://www.fct.pt/ supports/bolsas/valores.phtml.pt). The amount of the Voluntary Social Insurance (1^st step) is also added to this amount, and a Worker's Compensation Insurance is paid.

Only applications that meet the following requirements, considered mandatory, will be considered:

• Degree in the areas of Health or Biological Sciences, Chemistry and related areas or Bioinformatics
• Students enrolled in courses in the scientific areas indicated above, aiming to consolidate their scientific training through the development of research work leading to obtaining the respective academic degree whether or not integrated into R&D projects.

Candidates who do not meet the mandatory requirements listed above will be excluded. Candidates who do not present a graduation certificate with specification of the respective final score will also be excluded.

For candidates admitted to the call, the curricular evaluation will be carried out with a score from 0 to 20. If the Jury deems it necessary, it may call for an interview, by email, the three best-ranked candidates according to the curricular evaluation. In this case, the classification will have the following weighting: curriculum evaluation (70%), interview (30%).

Candidates will be ranked and the candidate with the highest score will be accepted. In case of impediment to the acceptance of the scholarship by the first selected candidate, the option may be the second classified (and so on) according to the list ordered by the Jury of the recruitment process. However, the jury reserves the right to decide that none of the available candidates meets the minimum requirements to occupy the open position, in which case a new recruitment procedure will be carried out.

Work plan:

1. Epigenetic assays in cells exposed to nanomaterials  or test chemicals.
2. Analysis,  interpretation and discussion of data from next generation sequencing using bioinformatics tools.
3. Colaboration in the preparation of publications of the results.
4. Colaboration in other activities in research from the Genetic Toxicology research group.