Postdoctoral Researcher in antiviral and host response drug repurposing

Do you want to contribute to top quality medical research?

We are seeking a highly skilled and motivated person to join the Östling team at SciLifeLab, Karolinska Institutet as a postdoctoral researcher to work on new strategies for drug repurposing against infectious diseases for a fixed-term employment.

Our team's overall goal is to develop a systems biology framework to match targeted therapies and drug combinations using omics- profiling to combat different diseases. We primarily do research on precision cancer medicine with the aim of optimizing treatments for individual cancer patients based on molecular profiling and functional drug testing. As our new research direction, we are additionally developing novel drug repurposing strategies in the infectious disease area based on host molecular responses to viral infections.

Your mission

The postdoctoral researcher will be joining a multi-partner EU-funded research consortium REMEDI4ALL (R4A, remedi4all.org). The R4A aims to rebuild the fundamentals of drug repurposing in Europe by developing an innovation platform supporting promising, high-impact drug repurposing projects in all disease areas, including infectious diseases. The host-response research project led by Dr. Päivi Östling acts as a demonstrator project to showcase and support the building of the R4A innovation platform capabilities.

This position includes planning, conducting, and summarizing research studies within the R4A demonstrator project, including Biosafety Level 3 laboratory (BSL3) work, high-throughput drug screening and data analysis. Furthermore, communication with R4A partners and project coordination will be needed. The candidate is also expected to take an active role in manuscript and grant writing as well as participating in supervising students.

Your profile

To be eligible for employment as a postdoctoral researcher, a PhD degree within the last three years is required. We are looking for a person with profound knowledge in medical biology with a focus on virology, drug discovery and repurposing. The successful candidate must be able to demonstrate prior research experience in virology and drug discovery. Applicants with experience in BSL-3, high-throughput drug screening, advanced imaging techniques, target identification methodologies and handling small-molecule inhibitors will be prioritized.

Previous research on SARS-CoV-2 / COVID-19 is highly warranted. Previous experience in research coordination, project management and multi-organization collaborations are strong merits. Understanding of software such as Cell Profiler and Harmony are valued. We place great emphasis on personal qualities, and the successful applicant will need feel comfortable with working in teams and demonstrate good interpersonal skills as well as be organized and independent to formulate new hypotheses and critically examine the results.

What do we offer?

Päivi Östling’s team, is part of the larger Kallioniemi research group, which is a creative and inspiring environment full of expertise and curiosity where each researcher has possibilities to develop individually as well as a team (www.scilifelab.se/researchers/olli-kallioniemi) Our research projects are done in a team science-oriented manner and link to the larger research communities at SciLifeLab, Department of Oncology and Pathology and Karolinska Institutet

Your work will be carried out at the Solna campus of SciLifeLab (www.scilifelab.se), which is a leading national infrastructure for next-generation life science research in Sweden and hosts 10 technology platforms and more than 1500 experts and researchers nationwide. More than half of these are located at campus Solna either in research groups or in the infrastructure facilities.

KI as our host university has the vision is to pursue the development of knowledge about life and to promote better health for all. KI is world famous for conducting successful medical research and hold the largest range of medical education in Sweden. KI is a state university, which entitles to several benefits such as extended holiday and generous occupational pension. Employees also have access to our modern gym for free and receive reimbursements for medical care.

Location: Solna

Choose to work at KI – Ten reasons why

Application

An employment application must contain the following documents in English or Swedish:

A complete resumé, including date of the thesis defence, title of the thesis, previous academic positions, academic title, current position, academic distinctions, and committee work
A complete list of publications
A summary of current work (no more than one page)
Personal letter (1 A4)

Welcome to apply at the latest December 27th.

The application is to be submitted through the Varbi recruitment system.

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