BOL

Would you like to participate in an exciting interdisciplinary research project to discover the hidden chemistry of plants and its evolution using computational omics approaches? Do you enjoy collaboration and teamwork while being at the cutting edge of scientific progress? We are looking for two PhD candidates with complementary skills to pioneer new technologies to analyze, explore and leverage the diversity of plant chemistry hidden in plant genomes.

Plants represent an untapped resource of natural bioactive compounds that significantly contribute to plant resilience to pathogens, herbivores, and abiotic stresses, and may be applied for medicine or crop protection. In this project, you will design and/or apply innovative omics integration strategies for genomics, transcriptomics, and metabolomics data, to discover plant specialized metabolite biosynthetic pathways and study their evolution. You will work together with the other PhD candidate in this project, which will entail a combination of algorithm development, greenhouse experiments, integrative omics analysis, and evolutionary genomics. Extensive local and international collaboration is foreseen, including possibilities for a foreign research visit as part of your PhD project.

The research is embedded within the chairs of Bioinformatics and Biosystematics. The projects will be (co-)supervised by Dr. Marnix Medema, Dr. Justin van der Hooft, Dr. Klaas Bouwmeester and Prof. Dr. Eric Schranz.

We ask

We are looking for two enthusiastic and complementary team players with all or a subset of the following skills:

a solid academic record (MSc) in bioinformatics, biology, or biotechnology
experience in computational omics analysis and proficiency in programming (in, e.g., Python)
at least basic to intermediate statistical and mathematical skills
demonstrable experience in working with next-generation sequencing data or with greenhouse experiments with plants
affinity with plant science, metabolism and/or biosynthetic pathways
you meet all the entry requirements of the WUR PhD programme.
More information

For more information about this position, please contact Marnix Medema, Associate Professor Bioinformatics, by email (marnix.medema@wur.nl).
For more information about the procedure, please contact vacaturemeldingen.psg@wur.nl.