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 arctic chronobiology. The selected candidate will write a proposal for a 24-month MSCA-PF at UiT together with Prof. David Hazlerigg. 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 3-5, 2025 (hybrid physical/digital event, see details at https://uit.no/arcticmsca/programstructure). 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 10, 2025. 

In this call we search for talented, young researchers within the field of arctic chronobiology as presented by Prof. David Hazlerigg:

I am interested in the basic mechanisms underlying innate long-term,´circannual´ timekeeping, their plasticity in the face of environmental change and their adaptive evolution. Here,´circannual´ is an umbrella term for the internal timekeeping processes that ensure particular phases in an organism’s life history (growth, breeding, migration, hibernation, moult) occur at appropriate times of year. Under this overarching theme, I would like to hear from candidates interested in contributing to the development of research in the following areas: genetic basis of seasonal smoltification in Atlantic salmon - we are using genome-wide association approaches to identify loci influencing the photoperiod-dependent expression of traits supporting the developmental transition of juvenile fish to a seawater tolerant migratory form evolution of non-visual photoreception in Svalbard ptarmigan - we are taking a functional comparative genomics approach to characterise the opsin- based transduction of arctic light exposure into seasonal changes in physiology and behaviour in the northernmost year-round resident bird species hypothalamic encoding of circannual time - we are developing new genetic manipulation approaches to characterise the mechanisms by which circannual time is encoded in specialized glial cells known as tanycytes, which are key modulators of homeostatic function in the hypothalamus

Please send your CV (max 3 pages) and describe a research project that will strengthen and complement the presented research (max 2 pages) to  david.hazlerigg@uit.no by Feb 16th 2025. Mark your application "Arctic MSCA". Successful candidates will be contacted in late March 2025.