Research Scientist (Ecological Networks)

Background

The Hildebrand group is working on microbial communities, bacterial strain evolution and genome plasticity, with the ultimate goal of understanding the microbial aetiology of a broad range of human diseases. The group is specialised in developing novel methods that merge metagenomics, evolution, species interactions, characterising unknown microbes.

The Role

The position will be computational, offering flexibility and opportunities for personal development. The post holder will contribute to supervising students and to grant and manuscript writing. The post holder will research microbial communities (human gut), to understand bacterial dependencies, their metabolism and investigate the ecological role in relation to human well-being. This 3-year funded position will give the applicant the opportunity to have an active role in building a new research group, offering independence, responsibility and scientific freedom.

The Ideal Candidate

The applicant holds a PhD degree related to Computer Science, Ecology or Microbiology and has expertise in numerical ecology, having worked with co-occurrence networks, probabilistic acyclic graphical methods or other community centric methods, such as enterotypes. They are acquainted with temporal and/or microbial data, (bacterial) metabolism and genome scale metabolic models. The candidate should be proficient in either Perl/C++/R/Python and the use of a Linux operated high performance computing environment. Wet lab experience will be considered a plus. The applicant is expected to work independently and have good communication skills.

Additional Information

Salary on appointment will be within the range £31,250 to £38,100 per annum depending on qualifications and experience. This post is for a contract of 3 years with a possibility of further extension.

For informal enquiries please contact Dr Falk Hildebrand by email at [contact hidden]

Further information and details of how to apply can be found here, or contact the Human Resources team on [contact hidden] or [contact hidden] quoting reference 1003654. To find out more about working at Quadram Institute, please click here.

Interviews will be held on 3 May 2019.

Further information about living and working in Norwich can be found here.

We are committed to equal opportunities and welcome applications from all sectors of society. The Institute supports equality of opportunity within the workplace and expects all employees to share and display these values. To support our commitment, we have a range of family, faith and diversity friendly working arrangements to help all staff achieve excellence in their area of work.

As a Disability Confident employer, we guarantee to offer an interview to all disabled applicants who meet the essential criteria for this vacancy.

About the Quadram Institute

The Quadram Institute is a new interdisciplinary research institute at the forefront of a new era in food and health research. Its mission is to understand how food and the gut microbiota are linked to the promotion of health and the prevention of disease. A partnership between [Employer hidden], the University of East Anglia, the Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital and BBSRC, it brings together scientists and clinicians in a new state-of-the-art building. The Quadram Institute is based on the Norwich Research Park, one of Europe’s largest centres of life sciences and home of the John Innes Centre and The Earlham Institute.

The closing date for applications will be 23 April 2019.

The [Employer hidden] is a registered charity (No. 1058499) and is an Equal Opportunities Employer.