“Excellence by Choice” Postdoctoral Programme in Life Science
Umeå University is one of Sweden’s largest institutions of higher education with over 35,000 students and 4,200 faculty and staff. We are characterised by world-leading research in several scientific fields and a multitude of educations ranked highly in international comparison. Recent breakthroughs at Umeå University include deciphering the molecular mechanisms of the bacterial CRISPR-Cas9 system and its repurposing into a tool for genome editing, a method developed at Umeå university that was awarded the 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
Umeå University is currently running the “Excellence by Choice” Postdoctoral Programme in Life Science research to train outstanding young researchers and stimulate cutting-edge research. As a collaboration between the two national Centres of Excellence – Umeå Centre for Microbial Research (UCMR) and Umeå Plant Science Centre (UPSC) – the programme aims to encourage new synergies in Life Science with a focus on molecular and translational research and to strengthen world-class research activities in Umeå. Patron for the programme is Nobel laureate Emmanuelle Charpentier, who discovered the CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing technology during her time as a scientist and group leader in Umeå.
In this second call, several fellowships are open for outstanding postdoctoral candidates interested to do research in the highly interactive and multidisciplinary research environments of UCMR and UPSC. In the scope of the “Excellence by Choice” Postdoctoral Programme, we aim to recruit up to six postdoctoral scientists in this round.
What is offers
The programme is open to all nationalities. The “EC” Postdoctoral Fellows will:
- Develop a collaborative project under supervision of at least two PIs
- Obtain 2-year full-time fellowship exempt from tax (672,000 SEK), as well as grants for project running costs (320,000 SEK) and the fellow’s career development (25,000 SEK)
- Access to UCMR/UPSC-affiliated core facilities and technical platforms such as Chemical Biology Consortium Sweden (CBCS), Protein Expertise Platform, metabolomics, proteomics, X-ray, NMR (850-400 MHz), The Computational Life Science Cluster (CLiC) – a node in NBIS (National Bioinformatics Infrastructure Sweden), Umeå Core Facility for Electron Microscopy (UCEM), and Biochemical Imaging Centre Umeå (BICU) that form a node in the National Microscopy Infrastructure (NMI)
- Participate in activities to strengthen networks and collaborations in academics and industry
- Involve in a strong postdoc community with the Umea Postdoc Society (UPS) which fosters networking amongst postdocs, organizes social and career development events
Who is eligible
To qualify as a postdoctoral fellowship holder, the postdoctoral fellow is required to have completed a doctoral degree or a foreign degree deemed equivalent to a doctoral degree in the relevant field. These qualification requirements must be fulfilled within six months after the closing date of the application.
Preference should be given to applicants who received their degree no more than three years before the end of the application period. Applicants who received their doctoral degree earlier may be considered in special circumstances. Special circumstances include absence due to illness, parental leave, clinical practice, elected positions in trade unions, or similar circumstances.
Candidates are encouraged to consider one of the project ideas listed below. The candidates’ merits and motivation for choice of project idea will be assessed by the PIs of each project respectively. A short list of applicants will then be requested to submit a short research proposal based on the chosen project idea, followed by an invitation to an interview by a panel of UCMR/UPSC researchers.
List of projects:
- Chemo-optogenetic engineering of cellular metabolism for microbial chemical production
PIs: Yaowen Wu, Anita Sellstedt - The identification of essential enzymes and genes of resistance that regulate herbivore infections in plants
PIs: Peter Marhavy, Sandra Jämtgård - Elucidating the role of cuticle on epidermis morphogenesis
PIs: Stéphanie Robert, Stéphane Verger - Developing data-driven structural refinement of neutron reflectometry data to understand processes at biological membranes
PIs: Gerhard Gröbner, Magnus Andersson - The effects of horizontal gene transfer on cell decision making
PIs: Eric Libby, Peter Lind - Regulation of host cell epitranscriptome in Salmonella infection
PIs: Teresa Frisan, Francesca Aguilo - Linking molecular structure and function with ultrafast multidimensional spectroscopy
PIs: André Mateus, Nicolò Maccaferri - Structure-function characterisation of the plant COP9 signalosome multiprotein
complex
PIs: Catherine Bellini, Karina Persson - Interactions between bacterial membrane vesicles and enteric viruses
PIs: Sun Nyunt Wai, Annasara Lenman - Role of mitochondrial dysfunction in host cell-autonomous immunity against Chlamydia
PIs: Barbara Sixt, Paulina Wanrooij - Mechanism of assembly at the tip of a Yersinia injectisome
PIs: Magnus Wolf-Watz, Matthew Francis - Illuminating the virological origin of type 1 diabetes
PIs: Anna Överby Wernstedt, Ulf Ahlgren - Across kingdoms exploration of evolutionarily conserved uncharacterized process essential for cell proliferation
PIs: Totte Niittylä, Bernt Eric Uhlin - Viral infections and pregnancy-related complications
PIs: Anne-Marie Fors Connolly, Sophia Harlid - Extracellular membrane vesicles from Gram-positive bacteria: biogenesis and host
interactions
PIs: Aftab Nadeem, Jan Oscarson - Detecting infections in elderly populations
PIs: Mattias Forsell, Anders Johansson - Pushing the resolution of intracellular co-localization by correlative fluorescence and electron microscopy
PIs: Linda Sandblad, Richard Lundmark - Mosquito-pathogen interactions at single cellular resolution
PIs: Oliver Billker, Magnus Evander - Mode-of-action of a novel anti-Cryptosporidium compound family
PIs: Christian Hedberg, Lars-Anders Carlson - Interaction circuits of epithelia and neutrophils during mucosal infection
PIs: Constantin Urban, Andrea Puhar
Deadline: 19 March 2023.
More information:https://www.umu.se/en/ucmr/ec-postdoc-programme/excellence-by-choice-postdoctoral-programme-in-life-science/