Ref LXI_MSCA_45 - Postdoc candidate for a MSCA PF in Environmental Chemistry, Cheminformatics, Non-Target Mass Spectrometry, Ontologies and/or Exposomics

The Luxembourg Centre for Systems Biomedicine (LCSB) is interested in hosting a postdoctoral fellow within the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellowship programme.

Project idea

We are open to consider applicants with a very strong project idea (e.g. environmental use case) who wishes to learn and apply our computational non-target screening methods. We are also open to applicants who wish to focus on certain critical bottlenecks in non-target screening and exposomics in general. Analytically, this would be integration of ion mobility and various ionisation/chromatographic techniques into computational workflows. From the cheminformatics standpoint, data scientists or cheminformaticians with an interest in ontologies and classification of substances to build on our recent PubChemLite work are very welcome to apply. Candidates interested in machine learning approaches are also welcome and will have to develop project ideas in tandem with additional collaborators.

Offer Requirements

• Ideal applicants will be interested in establishing, developing and maintaining analytical and/or computational mass spectrometry and cheminformatics methods and workflows, primarily for target and non-target environmental, metabolomics and exposomics analysis.
• We are open to applicants interested in developing their own projects and applications, or establishing methods to work on current challenges with some of our many collaborators.
• We seek a highly motivated and independent researcher with a PhD degree (or equivalent) in analytical chemistry, environmental sciences, computer science, informatics or related fields.
• If interested in analytical work, experience in target and non-target high resolution mass spectrometry (HR-MS/MS), will be necessary, preferably in an environmental setting - experience with Orbitrap instruments will be advantageous.
• If computational, experience in or willingness to learn non-target workflows for mass spectrometry data (metabolomics, environmental), R or other scripting languages, git-based subversion control (GitHub, GitLab) and to perform computational analysis of complex datasets to address various questions.
• Data scientists are welcome to work with us on ontologies and classification of substances in a way compatible with other open resources.
• Applicants should be strongly supportive of Open Science initiatives and willing to become an active member in international environmental, mass spectrometry and cheminformatics communities supporting researchers.

Institute description

The University of Luxembourg (Uni.lu) is a multilingual, international and research-oriented university founded in 2003. The Luxembourg Centre for Systems Biomedicine (LCSB) is an interdisciplinary research centre established at the University in 2009. It is accelerating biomedical research by closing the link between systems biology and medical research.

The Environmental Cheminformatics group at LCSB, led by Assoc. Prof. Dr. Emma Schymanski, focuses on the comprehensive identification of known and unknown chemicals in our environment to investigate their effects on health and disease, primarily with high resolution mass spectrometry (HRMS). Prioritizing efforts to find significant metabolites or potentially toxic substances responsible for observed effects is the key, which involves reconciling highly complex samples with expert knowledge and careful validation. Ensuring the open availability of high quality data is critical to improving computational methods and the ECI group contributes to several initiatives within the NORMAN Network and beyond. ECI coordinates the NORMAN Suspect List Exchange (NORMAN-SLE), ensuring the datasets are FAIR, archived on Zenodo and integrated into public resources such as PubChem and the CompTox Chemicals Dashboard.

The NORMAN-SLE is tightly connected with unique European initiatives such as NormaNEWS, the NORMAN Digital Sample Freezing Platform (DSFP) and MassBank.EU. ECI is also involved in MetFrag, developed in collaboration with the IPB (Halle) to form the basis for non-target identification. ECI maintains and develops several open R packages such as RMassBank, ReSOLUTION and RChemMass and Shinyscreen.

About Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Postdoctoral Fellowship

The MSCA PF are postdoctoral fellowships, financed through the European Commission for 2 year positions, covering salary and research costs of the researchers, who can come from anywhere in the world. The evaluation process of these programmes is more about the project and the career development of the candidate, than his/her publication record. The organizations in Luxembourg that want to host such talented researchers include large public research organizations as well as private companies that offer interesting job perspectives after completion of the fellowship.

Minimal eligibility criteria

• Individual: applicant applies together with host institute
• PhD at the deadline (PhD date cannot be more than 8 years ago)
• Not working or living in Luxembourg for longer than 12 months before the call deadline
• For rules see here or contact your NCP

How to apply

Please fill out the application form until May 15^th 2021 – please note that we cannot accept applications without the application form. We need your CV with a list of publications and if relevant a short project proposal (maximum 3 pages) as well as the offer reference you are interested in. You can also send several fine-tuned CVs if you are interested in multiple positions – please fill out a new application form in that case. Make sure you address the text and requirements mentioned by the respective hosts.

Please note that applications are made through Luxinnovation, your contact point for Horizon Europe in Luxembourg, before being handed over to the host company.

Don’t hesitate to contact us, if you have any questions.

Luxinnovation, the Luxembourgish Innovation agency and National Contact Point for MSCA, will support both you and your future host institute during your application phase. For all applicants coming to Luxembourg we offer guidance documents, webinars, training in proposal writing and we will review your proposals if you wish so (depending on our availability). In 2019, MSCA IF proposals from Luxembourg had an average success rate of 28.5%, and proposals reviewed by our service 42%.

More information can be found on our website.

See other similar positions here.

KEYWORDS

• Environmental Chemistry
• Cheminformatics
• Non-Target Mass Spectrometry
• Data Science
• Ontologies

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