Two postdoctoral researchers will carry out their work on interactions between diet, gut microbiome and colonic mucus in IBD as part of a fully funded grant by the Luxembourg National Research Fund (FNR). The projects are based on the recently publishedwork (Desai et al., Cell, 2016;Martens…Desai, Nature ReviewsMicrobiology, 2018) on the same topic and involves gnotobiotic mousemodels, synthetic microbial communities, IBD patient cohorts and keyinternational collaborations in Europe and in the USA. The postdocs willparticipate in an exciting research program in the ‘Microbiome and Ecoimmunology’ group headed by Prof. Mahesh S.Desai. Theultimate goals of this research are: 1) To identify the disease-causing immunepathways; and 2) To enhance the anti-TNF treatments in IBD using dietarytherapeutics

KEY ACCOUNTABILITIES

• conduct research project with sufficient guidance, yet enough independence to design and execute the experiments
• participate in multi-disciplinary research projects that will potentially open job opportunities in both academia and industry
• carry out experiments using gnotobiotic mouse models and samples from patient cohorts
• learn key techniques in microbiology, molecular biology and immunology
• develop scientific methodology and techniques adapted to the research project
• present research work in leading international conferences

KEY SKILLS, EXPERIENCE AND QUALIFICATIONS

• PhD degree in Microbiology/Immunology/Systems biology/Biochemistry/Molecular Biology/Bioinformatics
• high level of motivation for research, attention to detail, scientific creativity and originality, and writing skills
• languages skills : fluent command of English

Both positions are available immediately but the start date can be negotiated up to October 2019.