Job TI Food and Nutrition - PhD student in the area of constraint-based and dynamic modelling of biological processes

The PhD student will address the construction of genome-scale metabolic models of the mouse gut microbiota, focusing on short-chain fatty acid (SCFA) metabolism.

The research will be performed at the Laboratory of Microbiology, Chair for Systems and Synthetic Biology, Wageningen University.

Main tasks and responsibilities

• contributing to the full project plan
• staying abreast of developments in his scientific discipline by keeping up with the scientific literature in his field and visiting scientific meetings
• generating ideas within the scope of the defined subject
• supervising of research assistants and students, where appropriate
• delivering results in line with the project plan milestones and deliverables
• keeping up with the latest scientific developments and integrating these in the project
• converting data and results of the sub-project into overview reports
• keeping  traceable records of all results and analyses according to the lab journal procedure
• writing high-quality clearly written papers about the results obtained and getting these published in high–impact scientific journals.
• completing a thesis after 4 years.

• M.Sc. in Biomolecular Sciences, Biotechnology, Bioinformatics, Computer Sciences, M.Eng. in Chemical, Bioprocess or Electronic Engineering or related fields.

A labour contract for four years is offered by the University and the work will be carried out within a NCSB/ TIFN Project. 

TI Food and Nutrition is a joint initiative of government, industry and research institutes to strengthen the capacity for innovation and the competitive strength of the food industry. TI Food and Nutrition performs long-term strategic research at the highest level for the development of new and innovated food products with attention to health aspects. This leading institute for Food Sciences gives the Dutch food industry the innovative capacity to meet the challenges of the 21st century

The Netherlands Consortium for Systems Biology (NCSB www.ncsb.nl) implements systems biology as a powerful scientific approach in three major Dutch biological research areas: biomedical research, agricultural biotechnology and microbial biotechnology. The NCSB is financed by NGI (www.genomics.nl) and by the participating knowledge institutes and industry. The Netherlands Consortium for Systems Biology forms part of NGI's Enabling Technologies cluster and also organizes courses for the scientists that participate in projects funded by the NCSB.

For further information contact Prof. Dr. Ir. Vitor Martins dos Santos (vitor.mds@wur.nl, Tel: +31(0)317-482105).