Postdoc in Microbial biosynthesi

The Department of Engineering, Aarhus University, invites applicants for a fully funded two-year postdoc position offering applicants an exciting opportunity to join a new research project on identifying bioactive natural products from microorganisms.

The position is available from 1st of January 2019 or as soon as possible hereafter.

Job description
You are expected to lead a project focused on identifying microbial producers of new pharmaceutically-relevant natural products. The project aims to continuously monitor growing colonies using imaging and develop a protocol identifying the microbes with the highest potential for production of secondary metabolites. The project will interface with already running projects on isolation of environmental bacteria, screening for bioactivity, and isolation and characterization of secondary metabolites. Mentoring of younger students and gaining teaching experience is also an option.

Your profile
The ideal candidate:

• Holds a PhD in microbiology, biotechnology, natural product chemistry, or similar.
• Has demonstrated independent and creative work during their PhD.
• Has documented experience with a broad range of microorganisms and has considerable technical flair.
• Has good communications skills and speaks fluent English.

In addition, the following skills are not mandatory, but will be considered an advantage:

• Experience with programming, bioinformatics, or macroscopic imaging/photography.
• Screening for antimicrobial activity
• Experience with isolating (chromatography) and characterizing natural products (MS, NMR, etc.)

About the Laboratory for Microbial Biosynthesis
Our laboratory work on various aspects of natural product biosynthesis from identifying compounds associated with cryptic biosynthetic gene clusters to optimizing and up-scaling their production for biological studies. We have ongoing collaborations with colleagues at the Departments of Chemistry and have recently initiated a network towards identifying new antibiotics with colleagues at the Department of Microbiology. The laboratory is part of the Section for Biological and Chemical Engineering at the Department of Engineering. This is a Department The section include research on disease and health, materials, environmental technologies, biorefining, energy technologies and food and ingredient technology.
The place of work is Gustav Wieds Vej 10, 8000 Aarhus C, and the area of employment is Aarhus University with related departments.

Further information about the position may be obtained from / For further information please contact: Assistant Professor Thomas Tørring, thomast@eng.au.dk, +45 6171 8186

Application procedure
Shortlisting is used. This means that after the deadline for applications and with the assistance from the assessment committee chairman, and the appointment committee if necessary, the head of department selects the candidates to be evaluated. All applicants will be notified whether or not their applications have been sent to an expert assessment committee for evaluation. The selected applicants will be informed about the composition of the committee, and each applicant is given the opportunity to comment on the part of the assessment that concerns him/her self. Once the recruitment process is completed a final letter of rejection is sent to the deselected applicants, including the main considerations emphasized during the selection process. 

Formalities and salary range 
Science and Technology refers to the Ministerial Order on the Appointment of Academic Staff at Danish Universities under the Danish Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation.

The application must be in English and include a curriculum vitae, degree certificate, a complete list of publications, a statement of future research plans and information about research activities and verified information on previous teaching experience (if any). Guidelines for applicants can be found here. 

Appointment shall be in accordance with the collective labour agreement between the Danish Ministry of Finance and the Danish Confederation of Professional Associations. Further information on qualification requirements and job content may be found in the Memorandum on Job Structure for Academic Staff at Danish Universities. Salary depends on seniority as agreed between the Danish Ministry of Finance and the Confederation of Professional Associations. 

All interested candidates are encouraged to apply, regardless of their personal background. Research activities will be evaluated in relation to actual research time. Thus, we encourage applicants to specify periods of leave without research activities, in order to be able to subtract these periods from the span of the scientific career during the evaluation of scientific productivity.

Aarhus University offers Relocation service to International researchers. You can read more about it here.

Deadline
All applications must be made online and received by: 25.11.2018 

Please write in your application that you've seen the job at Jobfinder.