Post-Doctoral Researcher – Innovative Meat Substitutes to Support Human Nutrition and Health

This is a joint project between the ETH Sustainable Food Processing, Nutrition and Metabolic Epigenetics, and Translational Nutrition Biology Group in the Department of Health Science & Technology (D-HEST).

The ETH Laboratory of Sustainable Food Processing uses a combination of innovative sustainability assessment and emerging food production approaches to target fundamental challenges in agri-food systems. This group is highly interdisciplinary, cross-cutting across sustainability, nutrition, bioengineering, and food science domains. One major focus of the team is alternative protein rich food production for more sustainable and nutritious foods.

The ETH Laboratory of Nutrition and Metabolic Epigenetics acts as Co-Host in this project and studies the molecular interplay between nutrition, metabolism and the epigenome. The group uses a translational approach from in vitro systems and mice to humans combining next-generation sequencing, single-cell methodologies, genetics, cellular and molecular biology to decipher mechanisms that contribute to the development of chronic metabolic diseases and ageing.

The ETH Laboratory of Translational Nutrition Biology acts as Co-Host and follows a translational approach from mice to humans to elucidate molecular mechanisms underlying altered white and brown adipocyte formation and function. Special emphasis is given to the analysis of gene expression and lipid molecular species to identify signals that regulate these processes, thereby linking the influence of genetic and environmental contributions to the progression of obesity and its associated metabolic disorders.

We are starting the recruitment for a Post-Doctoral Researcher - Nutritious Meat Substitutes to support Health beginning of May 2024. The position is going to be open until a suitable candidate is found. Start date by mutual agreement with the latest start date on October 1st, 2024.

Job description

This collaborative project aims to produce and evaluate potential nutritional and health benefits in meat substitutes. It is planned as a nucleus for a bigger initiative on this interdisciplinary topic.

The project objectives are two-fold: (i) to produce nutritious hybrid meat substitutes from diverse plant-based raw materials and based on nutritional needs and (ii) to quantify nutritional and health impacts of hybrid meat substitutes in vitro (human cellular systems) in a broader scope, and to link these in vitro results to targeted in vivo analyses.

The whole research is strongly aligned with Novel Protein Flagship initiative of the ETH World Food System Center and existing collaborations with several international partners, such as the Singapore ETH Centre SEC food lab.

The position is fully funded.