The Role

Join an ERC funded research project investigating the inheritance and evolution of human associated microbes. The project will be conducted in a multidisciplinary team at the [Employer hidden] and Earlham Institutes, UK, and combine newly established patient cohorts, concomitantly developed wetlab and bioinformatics protocols that enable a unique perspective into the human gut microbiome.

Key Responsibilities

• Dissect microbial genetics enabling human long-term colonization on a novel family centric cohort.
• Use high-resolution metagenomics to track microbes across individuals and in families.
• Determine genes under selection using population genetics and network inference algorithms.
• Explore eco-evolutionary processes determining resilience and functional plasticity of gut microbiomes.

The Environment

The Hildebrand group uses metagenomics to research diversity, community interactions, and evolution of microbes using custom software solutions. The group has a joint appointment between the [Employer hidden] Bioscience and Earlham Institute to bridge data and life science, developing software such as LotuS2 and MATAFILER.

Ideal Candidate

The applicant needs to hold a PhD (or equivalent) in biology, bioinformatics, computer science or a related discipline with a background/interest in microbiomes, metagenomics, ecology, and evolution. Experience in independent scientific experiments, writing papers, presenting work, and grant writing is desirable. Basic statistics and programming skills (R, Python, Perl, C++) are essential.

Additional Information

Salary on appointment will be within the range £36,720 to £44,000 per annum. This is a full-time post for a contract of 19 months, potentially extensible for a further 12 months. For further information visit jobs.quadram.ac.uk or contact the Human Resources team at [contact hidden] quoting reference 1004793. This role meets the criteria for a visa application. [Employer hidden] Bioscience is a registered charity (No. 1058499) and an Equal Opportunities Employer.