The Center for Microbial Secondary Metabolites, CeMiSt, is one of 10 new Centers of Excellence funded by the Danish National Research Foundation. The Center is based at the Technical University of Denmark and hosted by Department of Biotechnology and Biomedicine (DTU Bioengineering). The purpose of CeMiSt is to unravel the biological role of microbial secondary metabolites in natural microbiological communities. The Center is led by Professor Lone Gram.

The research area of the position is within microbial natural product chemistry with focus on analysis of the interaction between secondary metabolite producing microorganisms.

Responsibilities and tasks

• You are an ambitious natural product chemist with broad experience in natural product chemistry.
• You will get a unique possibility to work on advanced analytical natural product chemistry focusing on how secondary metabolites of marine and soil bacteria and terrestrial fungi affect microbial diversity and functionality in both natural and engineered systems.
• You will be collaborating with scientists working on microbial ecology, on bioinformatics and on molecular microbiology on several topics:
  • Targeted analysis aiming at detection of trace amounts of known secondary metabolites in natural niches (e.g. algal or soil samples)
  • Comparative metabolomics of multi-species microbial model systems
  • Isolation and structural elucidation of unknown secondary metabolites
  • Characterization of secondary metabolite biosynthetic pathways
  • Genomics driven discovery and characterization of significant bioactive compounds

The position will allow you to collaborate with several research groups with expertise in microbial ecology, molecular microbiology, and gene sequence analyses.

Qualifications

• Candidates must hold a PhD degree (or equivalent).
• You should have a PhD degree in natural product chemistry covering several of the following qualifications:
• Experience with analysis and dereplication of natural products based on LC-DAD-HRMS coupled to database searchingExperience with trace analysis and quantification of small organic molecules
• Experience with MS/MS based imaging and network analysisHands-on experience with semi-preparative isolation of pure natural products
• Experience with structural elucidation of natural products based on advanced NMRFluent in English

You must be ambitious, well organized, structured and enjoy interacting with many different people including PhD students and postdocs. Also, a good sense of humor will be appreciated.

Further information 
Further information may be obtained from Professor Thomas Ostenfeld Larsen tol@bio.dtu.dk or Professor Lone Gram, gram@bio.dtu.dk or +45 23688295. You can read more about DTU Bioengineering at www.bioengineering.dtu.dk and a DTU podcast introduces the Center.

Application procedure
Please submit your online application no later than 23 May 2018 (local time). Apply online at www.career.dtu.dk