The Department CIBIO is coordinator of the European Training Network ProtoMet (Protometabolic pathways: exploring the chemical roots of systems biology) in the framework of the Horizon 2020 Marie Skłodowska-Curie Action for Innovative Training Network (ITN).
The ProtoMet Consortium is now launching eight positions for Early Stage Researchers (ESRs) for doctoral studies at the premises of the eight beneficiaries’ organisations.
ProtoMet will offer the opportunity to motivated international ESRs to address the tremendous challenge of understanding how prebiotic chemistry gave rise to life by training a new generation of scientists to think big, but also to work methodically and logically alongside colleagues from academia and industry.
Eight Early-Stage Researchers (ESRs), will be recruited to work in laboratories with expertise in systems chemistry, synthetic biology, microfluidics, and science philosophy to develop together a reconstituted protometabolism within compartments consisting of coacervates, vesicles, coacervate containing vesicles, and compartments etched into microfluidic chips.
In addition to Mansy’s lab at Department CIBIO, other laboratories involved in the project are based at University College of London (UK), the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics (DE), the University of Strasbourg (FR), ETH Zurich (CH), University of the Basque Country (ES) and the two French companies Cherry Biotech and Elvesys SAS.
In addition to their individual scientific projects, the successful candidates will benefit from further continuing education, which includes international mobility through internships and secondments at the partner’s premises, a variety of training modules as well as transferable skills courses and active participation in workshops and conferences.
Candidates are encouraged to apply to more than one position (up to three) and, eventually, express a priority preference for the positions.
Interested applicants have to meet the Marie Sklodowska-Curie Actions eligibility requirements as follows:
- Researcher status: Early-Stage Researchers (ESRs) are young researchers who, at the date of recruitment, are in the first four years (full-time equivalent research experience) of their research careers and have not been awarded a doctoral degree;
- Nationality: Applicant ESRs can be of any nationality;
- Mobility requirements: Applicant ESRs must not have resided or carried out their main activity (work, studies, etc.) in the country of the recruiting organisation for more than 12 months in the 3 years immediately before the recruitment date.
Links
PhD position, CIBIO, University of Trento: “Developing a primordial aconitase and iron-sulfide peptide catalysts”- Department of Chemistry, University College London: “Peptide Catalysed Triose Glycolysis”
- Institut de Science et d’Ingénierie Supramolé, University of Strasbourg: “Towards homochirality through the reductive amination of
ketoacids with transitionmetal peptide complexes” - Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics, Max Planck Society: “Elucidating the effect of coacervate compartments on metabolic reaction networks”
- Department of Material, ETH Zurich: “Lipid vesicles as protometabolic enhancers”
- Department of Logic and Philosophy of Science & Biofisika Institute, University of the Basque Country: “Exploring ‘minimal metabolism’ as a central concept for understanding the origins of life and developing systems biology”
- Cherry Biotech (enrolment of doctoral studies at University of Strasbourg), Cherry Biotech: “A microfluidic platform for protometabolism”
- Elvesys Sas (enrolment of doctoral studies at University of Strasbourg), Elvesys Sas: “A microfluidic platform for protometabolism and formation of droplets”