The candidate will investigate the gut virome and microbiome in babies and mothers during the first year of life. The stool and phenotype collection is done during pregnancy and at 7 timepoints during the first year of life in 1500 mother-baby pairs. The candidate will investigate the virome composition of the gut in mothers and babies, and its interaction with bacterial and human hosts. This work will be done together with other postdoc and three PhD students, working on the shared topics.

- PhD degree in biology, medical biology, virology, microbiology, bioinformatics or a comparable discipline
- Experience with advanced statistics, bioinformatics
- Experience with microbiome/metagenome/virome analysis
- Excellent oral and written communication skills
- Ability and wish to work in a team
- Fluency in English

The UMCG has a preventive Hepatitis B policy. The UMCG can provide you with the vaccination, should it be required for your position.

In case of specific professions a ‘Certificate of Good Conduct’ is required.

- You will be appointed as a postdoc in the Dutch University job-ranking system (UFO).
- Duration of the postdoc project is 3 years.
- Your salary will be a maximum of € 4.481,- gross per month (scale 10), depending on your qualifications and relevant experience, based on a full-time appointment.
- In addition, the UMCG will offer you 8% holiday pay and 8.3% end-of-year bonus.
- The terms of employment comply with the Collective Labour Agreement for Medical Centers (CAO-UMC).

Department of Genetics

Department of Genetics, UMCG is looking for a potential postdoc in the field of bioinformatics and microbiome analysis. The project is based on the microbiome and gut virome data that is currently being generated in the parent-child population cohort Lifelines-NEXT. The overall aim of the project is to investigate the composition of gut microbiome and virome, to link it with environmental and maternal factors, and with babies’ health.

The position is embedded in the microbiome group in department of Genetics, UMCG. The group includes about 10 enthusiastic PhD students and postdocs working on analysis of metagenomics data, genetics of microbiome, population cohorts and microbiome studies in patients with gastrointestinal diseases.

The University Medical Centre Groningen (UMCG), located in the center of Groningen, is one of the Netherlands’ eight university medical centers. The microbiome group includes colleagues from department of Genetics, Microbiology and Gastroenterology, and is a close community of scientists working on different aspects of microbiome analysis in relation to health and diseases.