PhD student in Evolutionary genomics - Hiring in process/Finished, not possible to apply

The Department of Ecology and Genetics is an international environment with staff and students from all over the world. Our research spans from evolutionary ecology and genetics to studies of ecosystems. For more information, see www.ieg.uu.se. A position as postdoctoral researcher are now available at the program Plant Ecology and Evolution.

Project description: That phenotypes often match their environments is demonstrated by the distribution of quantitative traits along environmental gradients. Understanding the genetic determinism of these traits is therefore of paramount importance to identify and understand the mechanisms that drive their evolution and, for instance, predict their evolution under environmental changes. The development of next generation sequencing (NGS) has just begun to shed light on the complexity of their genetic architecture. One major issue with genome-wide approaches is that they usually focus on point mutations and structural rearrangements are generally not considered. Coniferous trees species are, however, particularly fitted to address such questions as it is possible to extract and sequence DNA from haploid tissues and their population are known to show strong pattern of local adaptation. The PhD project thus aims at studying the role of structural rearrangements (starting by gene duplications) in adaptation using an integrative approach to link the different level of organization, from genotypes to phenotypes and natural populations of coniferous trees.

Duties:This integrative approach will lead the student to work in the field (sampling and common garden experiment), in the wet-laboratory (tissue culture, molecular analyses), and analyze -omics and eco-evolutionary data.

Qualifications required: To be eligible for a PhD-student position the applicant must hold a master degree (or equivalent) in Evolutionary Biology, Population Genetics, Bioinformatic or a related field. Candidates must be able to express themselves in spoken as well as written English.

Qualifications desired: The applicant should master the main concepts in Evolutionary Biology, have a background in population genetics/genomics and a solid foundation in the statistical considerations for these analysis. The following skills will be considered a merit: Molecular biology/wet-lab, experimental biology, field-work, inferential statistics, meta-data analysis, programming languages. Please not that a back-ground in Plant Biology is not required.

Position: Temporary position according to the Higher Education Ordinance chapter 5 § 7. The graduate program covers four years of full-time study. The position can be combined with teaching or other duties at the department (maximum 20%), which prolongs the employment with the corresponding time. The salary will be set according to local agreements. Rules governing PhD candidates are set out in the Higher Education Ordinance Chapter 5, §§ 1-7 and in Uppsala university's rules and guidelines http://regler.uu.se/search/?hits=30&languageId=1&search-language_en=English. More information about postgraduate studies at Uppsala University is available at http://www.teknat.uu.se/education/postgraduate/.

Application: The application should include 1) a letter of intent describing yourself, your research interests and motivation of why you want to do a PhD, and why you are suitable for the position, 2) your complete CV, including a short description of your education, 3) a copy of your master thesis if avaliable and your course grades, 4) the names and contact information to at least two reference persons (e-mail address and phone no.). The application should be written in English.

Uppsala University aims for gender balance and diversity in all activities in order to achieve a higher quality at all levels of the organization. We therefore welcome applicants of any gender and with different birth background, functionality and life experience.

Starting date: January 2020 or as otherwise agreed.

Salary: According to local agreement for PhD students.

For further information about the position please contact: Pascal Milesi, Associate Senior Lecturer, pascal.milesi@scilifelab.uu.se, +46 7 69 31 25 89.

You are welcome to submit your application no later than 2020-01-15, UFV-PA 2019/4228.