Rapid diagnosis of infection is vital to save patients lives and optimize their treatment. State of the art routine diagnosis of bacterial infections still requires culture of the causative micro-organisms to allow their identification. This takes time, precious time. In order to drastically speed up diagnosis by eliminating the need for culture, the SiBaGem project (Single Bacterial Genomics and MALDI-TOF) is developing a novel diagnostic platform called DigiTOF® (www.biosparq.nl ). This system will identify single microbial cells directly in clinical samples, without the need for culture. This allows a quantitative diagnosis of single or multiple species in the sample and reduces time to diagnosis from days to minutes.

The Postdoctoral Scientist will work in a highly stimulating multidisciplinary project, developing forefront diagnostic as well as scientific instrumentation, and data on its application. The research tasks will comprise:

• establishing a classifier database of single cell MALDI-TOF MS spectra of relevant collections of bacteria and yeasts for prosthetic joint infections (PJIs) representing high cost per case infections, and urinary tract infections (UTIs), representing high frequency infections,
• design protocols for UTI and PJI diagnosis with the DigiTOF beta prototype and demonstrate their functionality in relevant clinical settings,
• setting up international collaborations to verify applicability of the DigiTOF in an international multicenter context.

The Postdoctoral Scientist will work in close collaboration with the Research Technician and other team members, and will be in direct contact with the developers of the DigiTOF at BiosparQ in Leiden, The Netherlands. The Postdoctoral Scientist will report to the project leader Dr. Zaat. The Postdoctoral Scientist will also be the central contact point in the project and will be responsible for internal and external reporting.

Requirements