The Helmholtz Zentrum München (HMGU)  is  seeking a highly motivated PhD student for the newly funded ERC project to develop phage therapy, which utilizes phages or phage-derived inhibitors as natural ways to fight antibiotic resistance. The successful applicant will be involved in the development and the use of new methods and tools for illustrating bacteriophages infecting antibiotic resistance bacteria, including isolating, handling, analyzing phages on antibiotic resistance bacteria, as well as interpreting metagenomic and meta-transcriptomic (RNA-seq), proteomic data.

The research focus in our lab is on the interaction of bacteria and viruses (phages). As pioneers in the development of “metaviromics” which involves isolating and sequencing the RNA/DNA from all of the viruses in a sample directly, we query ‘wild’ viral populations to identify important hypotheses that can be evaluated using model-system approaches (Deng et al, Nature, 2014, doi: 10.1038/nature13459). We also employ sing-cell assays to investigate questions that are critical for modelling and predicting the impacts of phage-host interactions.

Skills/Qualifications

• Master in virology, microbiology, molecular biology, (environmental) genomics, microbial ecology or a related field
• Experience in any of the following areas: viral genomics, metagenomics, NGS, phage biology
• Fluency in English both spoken and written

Specific Requirements
Experience with flow cytometers is advantageous.