Position as PhD Research fellow (Stipendiat SKO 1017) available at The Department of Biology
The Department of Informatics and the Department of Biology at the University of Oslo are announcing two PhD positions within the field of bioinformatics and computational genomics under the umbrella of the Computational Life Science initiative (CLSi). The PhD Research Fellowship Ref.no. 2011/3807 is also part of this collaborative announcement.
CLSi is part of the Molecular Life Science interfaculty research area at UiO (MLS@UiO). CLSi is the first step towards establishing a leading interdisciplinary bioinformatics environment for the entire university. The idea is to promote research, services, education and collaboration within bioinformatics, biostatistics, and computational life sciences at UiO.The PhD positions are important in the effort to build a strong team to serve the needs of UiO when it comes to service, research and teaching in bioinformatics. CLSi is administrated from the Department of Informatics and headed by professor Nils D. Christophersen.
Common to both PhD positions is that they will be involved in projects aiming at improving analysis of high throughput sequencing (HTS) data. The two PhD candidates should work as a team – with one position being more informatics/algorithm oriented, while the other more application oriented. Both PhD projects will be carried out in close collaboration with scientists at the Department of informatics, the Department of Biology and the Norwegian High-Throughput Sequencing Centre (NSC). The supervision of the two candidates will be carried out by a group of scientists including both biologists and computer scientists.
The fellowships is for a period of up to 4 years, with 25 % compulsory work. Starting date no later than 01.10.2011.
Job description:
The successful candidate will be associated with the Norwegian Centre of Excellence: Centre for Ecological and Evolutionary Synthesis (CEES; www.cees.uio.no) situated at the Department of Biology. CEES is one of two partners forming the Norwegian High-Throughput Sequencing Centre (NSC; http://www.sequencing.uio.no/ in collaboration with Department of Medical Genetics (IMG), at Oslo University Hospital. At present, NSC has four HTS machines; two GS FLX (454/Roche) located at CEES and one Illumina GAII and one HiSeq 2000 at IMG. A Pacific Biosciences (PACBIO RS) – a true single molecule sequencer – is ordered and expected to be installed in Q4 2011. The main goals of the NSC are to be able to provide high throughput sequencing services for re-sequencing, transcriptomics, metagenomics and de novo sequencing for the Norwegian research community and provide customized bioinformatics analysis of the sequence data.
This PhD position will work on a project utilizing HTS data generated with the various HTS technologies for mutation detection, genome scans and epigenetics. Both existing software and analysis methods, and those developed by the informatics-oriented PhD candidate will be utilized. The project will have a particular focus on comparing the Illumina and Pacific Biosciences technologies for analysis of DNA modifications (epigenetics) in DNA from different biological sources (including plants and vertebrates). Single molecule HTS opens up new possibilities for analysis of modified bases in DNA, and thus studies of epigenetic inheritance. Major tasks include generating efficient methods for analyzing “single molecule epigenetics” and using such data for quantifications of transgenerational inheritance of DNA modification patterns in order to better understand the evolutionary effects of epigenetics. This part of the PhD project will be linked to ongoing research activities in epigenetics associated with Colloquium 2 at CEES.
Requirements:
The candidate must hold a MSc degree (or equivalent) in molecular biology/genomics or biology and demonstrate a keen interest in learning bioinformatics. Applicants should preferentially have experience with bioinformatics and/or computational biology. Knowledge and experience with DNA sequence analysis and genomics is an advantage.
We seek highly motivated, enthusiastic persons who are eager to learn. In addition, we seek good team workers with good interpersonal skills. The projects will be strongly interdisciplinary and the successful candidates are expected to collaborate closely with both each other as well with researchers at the Department of Informatics, the Department of Biology and the NSC.
The purpose of the fellowship is research training leading to the successful completion of a PhD degree.
The fellowship requires admission to the research training programme at the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences. An approved plan for the research training, including a project outline, must be submitted no later than two months after taking up the position, and the admission must be approved within three months. For more information see:
A good command of English is required.
Salary:
Pay grade: 48 - 56 (NOK 383 700 – 440 500 per year)
The application must include:
- Application letter including a statement of interest, summarizing the applicant's scientific interests and describing how she/he fits the description of the person we seek.
- CV (summarizing education, positions and academic work - scientific publications)
- Copies of educational certificates, transcript of records and letters of recommendation
- List of publications and academic work that the applicant wishes to be considered by the evaluation committee
- Names and contact details of 2-3 referees (name, relation to candidate, e-mail and telephone number)
Foreign applicants are advised to attach an explanation of their University’s grading system. Please remember that all documents should be in English or a Scandinavian language.
In accordance with the University of Oslo’s equal opportunities policy, we invite applications from all interested individuals regardless of gender or ethnicity.
UiO has an agreement for all employees, aiming to secure rights to research results a.o.
- Region:
- Oslo
- Job type:
- Contract
- Working hours:
- Full-time
- Working days:
- Day
- Application deadline:
- April 15, 2011
- Location:
- Blindern, Oslo
- Reference number:
- 2011/3806
- Home page:
- http://www.bio.uio.no
- Contacts:
- Professor Kjetill Jakobsen
Telephone: +47 22854602 / 22854603
