A four-year postdoctoral fellowship on comparative metabolomics of termite fungus cultivars and microbial communities is available from 1 October 2018 in the Section for Ecology and Evolution within the Department of Biology at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark. The fellowship will be part of a 5-year research project titled “Disease-free social life without antibiotic resistance”, financed by an ERC Consolidator Grant to Assoc. Prof. Michael Thomas-Poulsen . The project will be based at excellent research environment of the Centre for Social Evolution  and will involve development of fungus-growing termite colony rearing, infection experiments and sampling for chemical and genomic analyses. The work will involve fieldwork in Comoe National Park, Ivory Coast. The successful applicant will have experience and interest in social insect rearing, infection experiments and defensive symbioses, and will work closely with a microbiologist/molecular biologist PhD student, who will use experimental evolution approaches to explore resistance evolution in target pathogens.

• PhD in biology.
• Experience with insect rearing.
• Experience with microbiological techniques and infection experiments.
• An interest in fieldwork and symbiotic interactions.
• Creativity and ability to be both team-oriented and independent.
• Embrace of an international research environment and interdisciplinary research.
• A proven record of excellent English speaking, reading and writing skills

• The successful candidate will be offered a full-time position for a period of four years, contingent on a satisfactory performance, with the specific intent that it results in production of scientific publications.
• Terms of appointment and payment according to the agreement between the Ministry of Finance and The Danish Confederation of Professional Associations on Academics in the State.
• While negotiation for salary supplement is possible, the starting salary is currently up to 419,771 DKK/year including annual supplement (+ pension up to DKK 71,780).