PhD Student (Doktorand) in Systems Immunology - Hiring in process/Finished, not possible to apply

Description of the workplace
The Systems Immunology Lab is seeking a curious, driven candidate with experience in computational biology and human immunology for a Data-Driven Life Sciences (DDLS) PhD position in systems immunology. Led by Associate Senior Lecturer Camila Consiglio, our team employs high-throughput multiomics technologies and advanced computational methods to explore sex differences in human immunity.

Project Overview:
The immune system is highly variable between individuals, leading to diverse responses to infection, vaccination, and immune disorders. Biological sex significantly contributes to this variability, with men experiencing more severe infections and women showing heightened responses to vaccines and increased autoimmunity. Yet, the precise mechanisms that underlie such sexual dimorphism in immunity remain poorly understood. In this project, the computational biology PhD student will explore mechanisms underlying sex differences in human immunity using high-throughput multi-omics datasets. The project involves a comprehensive investigation of biological sex and sex hormone effects in the immune system under various conditions, including homeostasis, vaccination, and infection, using systems-level computational biology methods.

What we offer
Read more on the University’s website about being a Lund University employee, Work at Lund University.

Work duties and areas of responsibility
In this PhD project, you will apply systems immunology methods to comprehensively profile the human immune system using various high-throughput technologies. The assignment comprises transcriptomic (bulk and sc-mRNA-seq), epigenomic (ATACseq, CUT&RUN), proteomic (Olink assays) and compositional and immunophenotypic profiling (high dimensional cytometry). Work responsibilities include data curation and processing, and composition, editing or executing of computational scripts/workflows. Other work duties include project management, writing of grants and manuscripts, presenting at national and international conferences, attendance at seminars, informal mentorship of other employees, and working collaboratively with lab members and collaborators.   

Requirements
Requirements are:

• Master of Science within Bioinformatics, Biomedicine, statistics, quantitative biology or a related discipline, or equivalent
• Fluency in computational programming, preferably using R or python
• Experience in computational biology/ omics data analysis
• Background understanding of, and experience in immunology research
• Proficiency in oral and written communication in English
• Strong communication, presentation and writing skills

Additional qualifications meritorious for the position are

• Specific interest in human immunology, sexual dimorphism, and systems immunology
• Experience in systems immunology methods
• Experience with curation, preprocessing and/or analysis of bulk RNAseq, scRNAseq, or other types of omics data
• Familiarity with:
  - git and GitHub
  -best practices in reproducibility and open science
• Experience in utilizing high performance computing clusters

Great emphasis will be placed on personal characteristics. The assignments require you to have the ability to work independently as well as the ability to work well with others in the research group and researchers outside the subject area. It also requires you to be patient, detail-oriented and precise.

Eligibility
Students with basic eligibility for third-cycle studies are those who
- have completed a second-cycle degree
-have completed courses of at least 240 credits, of which at least 60 credits are from second-cycle courses, or
- have acquired largely equivalent knowledge in some other way, in Sweden or abroad.

Assessment basis
The employment of doctoral students is regulated in the Swedish Code of Statues 1998: 80. Only those who are or have been admitted to PhD-studies may be appointed to doctoral studentships. When an appointment to a doctoral studentship is made, the ability of the student to benefit from PhD-studies shall primarily be taken into account. In addition to devoting themselves to their studies, those appointed to doctoral studentships may be required to work with educational tasks, research and administration, in accordance with specific regulations in the ordinance.

Type of employment
Temporary employment of four years, in accordance with the Higher Education Ordinance-
HF 5 kap 7§ in Sweden.
The employment is a full term position with the desired start date of January 1st, 2024, or according to agreement. 

How to apply
The application is to include all of the following:

• A one-page personal motivation letter in English
• CV, containing information on how you fit this specific PhD position (see "Requirements" section) and information of two references
• A diploma (including a grade transcript) and other documents you wish to be considered (e.g. letters of recommendation).