Post-doctoral position at University of Granada: Apply for an Athenea3i-2018 Research Fellowship at the Department of Microbiology

Professor Maximino Manzanera , from the Department of Microbiology at the University of Granada, welcomes postdoctoral candidates interested in applying for an Athenea3i Research Fellowship in 2018 at this University. The information about the Fellowship conditions, how to apply, Eligibility Criteria, Selection Process, Evaluation Process, etc. is available in https://athenea3i.ugr.es/. Please note that applicants must comply with the Eligibility Criteria (https://athenea3i.ugr.es/?page_id=23).  

Brief description of the institution:

The University of Granada (UGR), founded in 1531, is one of the largest and most important universities in Spain. It serves more than 60000 students per year, including many foreign students, as UGR is the leader host institution in the Erasmus program. UGR, featuring 3650 professors and more than 2000 auxiliary personnel, offers a total of 75 degrees through its 112 departments and 28 centers.

UGR is also a leading institution in research, located in the top 5/10 of Spanish universities by a variety of ranking criteria, such as national R&D projects, fellowships awarded, publications, or international funding. UGR is one of the few Spanish Universities listed in the Shanghai Top 500 ranking (http://www.arwu.org/), and it is also well recognized for its web presence (http://www.4icu.org/top200/).

Internationally, we bet decidedly by our participation in the calls of H2020, both at partner and coordination. For the duration of the Seventh Framework Programme, the UGR has obtained a total of 66 projects, with total funding of 17.97 million euros, and for H2020, until 2015, more than 25 projects with total funding of more than 6 million euros. Our more than 3,000 researchers are grouped into 365 research groups covering all scientific fields and disciplines.

Brief description of the Centre/Research Group

Our research group (Xeroteam) is interested in the protection of crops from drought using microorganisms. We study the mechanisms employed by some organisms (anhydrobionts) that allow them to survive desiccation and then apply such mechanisms to sensitive plants that otherwise would die due to the lack of water. Our research team is located at the Institute for Water Research (IWR), a World´s leading Center for studies of water. Thanks to the high-tech instruments we have, and those from the Center of Scientific Instruments (CSI) from the University of Granada we can perform the latest techniques. Both the IWR and CSI are part of the University of Granada, considered as the third University in the Spanish Ranking of Universities and it is has been chosen as the best University in Europe by international students in 2016. Our team collaborates with groups from other countries such as USA (San Diego State Uni, Germany, United Kingdom, Ireland, among others).

Project description

Our research project, focuses on the use of different types of microorganisms in combination to improve the tolerance to drought of plants. We aim to use some types of actinobacteria in combination with arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) for the protection of pepper, tomato, soy and corn plants from the damage produced by the lack of water. We try to establish the environmental factor that restrict the use of such microorganisms in soils to facilitate the colonization of the plant by the microorganism. We are also interested in the genetic regulation of the process of colonization, as well as on the protection of the plant. We employ a multidisciplinary approach for such studies making use of microbiological tools, and OMICs such as metabolomics and transcriptomics.

Research Area

• Life Sciences (LIFE)

For a correct evaluation of your candidature, please send the documents below to Professor Maximino Manzanera (manzanera@ugr.es):

• CV
• Letter of recommendation (optional)