Postdoc in early life microbiome

Job description

You will be responsible for applying longitudinal models to investigate the gut microbiome and metabolomics in infants and mothers starting from pregnancy until the first year of life. Annotation of taxonomy and metabolic pathways using Biobakery tools have already been applied on a subset of the cohort (~700 mother-infant pairs). The candidate will focus on deeper investigation of the bacterial strains, bacterial genes and evolutionary dynamics of the gut microbiome development in infants and will link the gut virome and microbiome composition to environmental and host factors. Ability/interest in developing new tools for microbiome data analysis will be an advantage. This work will be done together with 2 other postdocs and 5 PhD students, working on shared topics.

Working environment

The University Medical Centre Groningen (UMCG), located in the centre of Groningen, is one of the Netherlands’ 8 university medical centres. The microbiome group includes colleagues from the department of Genetics, Microbiology and Gastroenterology, and is a close community of scientists working on different aspects of microbiome analysis in relation to health and diseases.

Department of Genetics:
The Department of Genetics, UMCG is looking for an enthusiastic postdoc in the field of bioinformatics, microbiome and metabolomics analyses. The focus of the postdoc will be to assist on the current ongoing projects of Lifelines-NEXT. Lifelines-NEXT is a longitudinal birth cohort of the Northern Netherlands which aims to recruit 1,500 mother-infant-pairs and collects extensive metadata and biological data of parents and infants. Currently, microbiome and virome data, along with extensive phenotypic data has been collected and processed. The stool metabolomics and metagenomics analysis of other datasets are planned. The overall focus of the project is the longitudinal analysis of gut microbiome and virome in relation to maternal, environmental and birth factors and infants’ health, starting from [pre-]pregnancy to 1 year of life. For the follow up timepoints (2-6 years) the collection started.
The position is embedded in the microbiome group in the department of Genetics, UMCG. The group includes around 25 enthusiastic PhD students and postdocs working on the analysis of metagenomics data, genetics of microbiome, population cohorts and microbiome studies in patients with gastrointestinal diseases.

What do we need

• You have a PhD degree in biology, medical biology, microbiology, bioinformatics or a comparable discipline.
• You have a background in computational approaches for metagenomic, multi-omic integration (e.g. with metabolomics or genetics), and their application in human population studies.
• You have excellent skills in computational environments for ‘omics data manipulation (Python, R, bash etc.).
• You have excellent oral and written communication skills.
• You are an excellent team player who can work well in an international team.
• You are fluency in English.

The UMCG has a preventive Hepatitis B policy. The UMCG can provide you with the vaccination, should it be required for your position.
In case of specific professions a ‘Certificate of Good Conduct’ is required.

What do we offer

You will be appointed as a postdoc in the Dutch University job-ranking system (UFO). Duration of the postdoc project is 2 years, with the possibility of extension.
Your salary will be a maximum of €5.088,- gross per month (scale 10), depending on your qualifications and relevant experience, based on a full-time appointment. In addition, the UMCG will offer you 8% holiday pay, and 8.3% end-of-year bonus. The conditions of employment comply with the Collective Labour Agreement for Medical Centres (CAO-UMC).

For questions about the position

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