Research assistant - Metagenomic analysis of fungal and viral communities

Department of Aquatic Sciences and Assessment
The Department of Aquatic Sciences and Assessment (www.slu.se/aquatic-sciences) is working with applied environmental science, with a national responsibility for assessing the condition of Swedish surface waters with respect to water chemistry, pollution and aquatic biota. The department has some 130 employees. The research focuses on geochemical and hydrological processes, aquatic ecology and biodiversity, as well as on aquatic ecotoxicology and environmental chemistry. The department is part of a Soil-Water-Environment cluster, a recently established competence center for landscape-level processes that also includes the Departments of ‘Soil and Environment’ and ‘Energy and Technology’. The breadth of expertise among the 300 members in combination with a well-equipped infrastructure creates a unique platform for high quality research as well as environmental monitoring and assessment.
Duties:
We want to hire a research assistant with molecular biology and microbiology background and with strong biocomputational skills to perform bioinformatic analysis of environmental fungal and viral communities from Arctic aquatic ecosystems. The job includes bioinformatic processing and statistical analyses of fungal genomes, ribosomal RNA sequences and metagenomes as well as viral metagenomes retrieved from aquatic habitats. The candidate is also expected to contribute to the writing of an article based on the results. The bioinformatic analyses will involve quality control, assembly and functional annotation of shotgun metagenomes using tools such as Trimmomatic, Megahit, Spades, IDBA-UD, BBMap, Kaiju, MetaEuk, eggNOG and HTSeq. Statistical analyses and visualization of the results are expected to be done using R.

Qualifications:
The successful candidate will be the holder of a university degree in the field of biosciences and have considerable research experience in the field of microbial ecology. Candidates further need to demonstrate previous experience of conducting bioinformatics analyses of eukaryotic and viral communities and related statistical analyses using the tools listed in the work description. We expect the holder of the position to independently handle these tasks without any further training. Experience in leading and contributing to scientific publications relevant for the position is considered a merit. Knowledge about the Arctic thermokarst environments is desirable and will be considered as an additional merit. We are looking for a candidate who can work in a structured manner with attention to detail and proper written documentation. The working language in the group is English.

Place of work:
Uppsala

Form of employment:
Fixed term employment of 5 months, with possible extension.

Extent:
50%

Starting date:
 

January 2022 or by agreement

Application:
We welcome your application no later than 2021-10-19, use the button below.

Academic union representatives:
https://internt.slu.se/en/my-employment/employee-associations/kontaktpersoner-vid-rekrytering/



The Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU) develops the understanding and sustainable use and management of biological natural resources. The university ranks well internationally within its subject areas. SLU is a research-intensive university that also offers unique degree programmes in for example rural development and natural resource management, environmental economics, animal science and landscape architecture.

SLU has just over 3,000 employees, 5,000 students and a turnover of SEK 3 billion. The university has invested heavily in a modern, attractive environment on its campuses in Alnarp, Umeå and Uppsala.

www.slu.se

SLU is an equal opportunity employer.