Plant roots house one of the most diverse, yet vastly neglected, microbial communities on Earth. The aim of the Gravitation program, MICROP, is to harness the genomic potential of root microbes as a new platform for improved stress resilience of future crops and sustainable food production.

Working with groups at the University of Amsterdam (UvA), Free University (VU), Utrecht University (UU), Wageningen University (WU) and The Netherlands Institute for Ecological Research (NIOO), we will:

1. unlock how wild and cultivated plant species, across the plant kingdom, recruit their microbial partners to cope with environmental stress, maximize nutrient uptake, and protect them against pathogens and insects and
2. harness microbiome functions to optimise future crop resilience and performance in a changing climate.

In collaboration with partners around the world, this knowledge will form the basis for a new era of microbiome-assisted agriculture.

We are seeking an outreach and operational officer who will be responsible for outreach, international exchange of biological materials and data management of the research programme. You will be responsible for keeping MICROPs website up to date, identifying, collecting and enabling publication of MICROP news and contributing to outreach to the general public. You will support the coordinator with the organization and corresponding paperwork of international exchange of biological materials and the organization of data storage and data accessibility. You will be part of the management team of the programme consisting besides you of the programme leader, Prof. Harro Bouwmeester and the programme manager.

What are you going to do?

• Coordinate and facilitate the programmes’ outreach;
• contact MICROP partners and personnel to solicit and help write news articles;
• contribute to the organization and publication of outreach to the general public;
• arrange licenses and permission for import and export of and working with (restricted) biological materials;
• coordinate the programme’s data management;
• participate in and provide support for programme meetings.

These tasks will require the interaction with MICROP co-applicants and personnel and relevant officers and departments at UvA and other participating institutions, including communication, biosafety and others.

What do we require?

• A master’s degree, preferably in biology;
• excellent social and organizational skills, professional, responsible, accurate and independent;
• relevant operational and communication experience;
• excellent written communication and reporting;
• fluency in Dutch and English;
• innovative and creative.

Our offer

A temporary contract for 22,8 hours per week, preferably starting at 1 July 2020 for the duration of 4 years. The initial contract will be for a period of one year. If we assess your performance positive the temporary contract will be extended with 3 years to a total duration of 4 years.

The salary, depending on relevant work experience before the beginning of the employment contract, will be €2,709 to €4,274 (scale 10) gross per month, based on full-time employment (38 hours a week). These amounts are exclusive 8 % holiday allowance and 8,3% end-of-year bonus. The Collective Labour Agreement of Dutch Universities is applicable.

Are you curious about our extensive package of secondary employment benefits like our excellent opportunities for study and development? Then find out more about working at the Faculty of Science.

University of Amsterdam

With over 5,000 employees, 30,000 students and a budget of more than 600 million euros, the University of Amsterdam (UvA) is an intellectual hub within the Netherlands. Teaching and research at the UvA are conducted within seven faculties: Humanities, Social and Behavioural Sciences, Economics and Business, Law, Science, Medicine and Dentistry. Housed on four city campuses in or near the heart of Amsterdam, where disciplines come together and interact, the faculties have close links with thousands of researchers and hundreds of institutions at home and abroad.  

The UvA’s students and employees are independent thinkers, competent rebels who dare to question dogmas and aren’t satisfied with easy answers and standard solutions. To work at the UvA is to work in an independent, creative, innovative and international climate characterised by an open atmosphere and a genuine engagement with the city of Amsterdam and society.

Faculty of Science - Swammerdam Institute for Life Sciences

The Faculty of Science has a student body of around 6,500, as well as 1,600 members of staff working in education, research or support services. Researchers and students at the Faculty of Science are fascinated by every aspect of how the world works, be it elementary particles, the birth of the universe or the functioning of the brain.

The Swammerdam Institute for Life Sciences (SILS) is one of the Faculty of Science’s largest institutes. Its approximately 240 scientists and staff members work in 16 research groups that perform excellent research centered on four themes: Cell & Systems Biology, Neurosciences, Microbiology and Green Life Sciences.

Within the Theme Green Life Sciences, five research groups have dedicated their research to plants: Plant Physiology, Molecular Plant Pathology, Developmental Genetics, Plant Cell Biology and Plant Hormone Biology. The Plant Hormone Biology group investigates the role of plant hormones and other signaling molecules in the communication of plants with other organisms. The group consists of an international team of post-docs, Phds and technicians - with expertise ranging from analytical chemistry to biochemistry and molecular biology - who are working on a number of inter-related topics.