Postdoctoral Researcher in systems immunology

Do you want to contribute to top quality medical research?

Prof. Petter Brodin’s Lab of Systems Immunology
Unit of Clinical Pediatrics, Department of Women’s and Children’s Health, KI.

In the Brodin lab, the team uses state-of-the-art single cell technologies to study human systems immunology. Samples, mostly from blood or isolated PBMCs are multiplexed and cultured and stimulated using a unique liquid handling robotic platforms and analysed by single-cell mRNA-seq., Mass/Flow cytometry and plasma protein assays.

The Brodin lab is looking to hire a postdoc to study immune microbe interactions early in life in human newborns. The specific focus will be to identify commensal-reactive T/B cells from newborn PBMC samples and investigate their regulation, function and clonal responses during the first months of life. This is important for understanding how colonization of microbes occur and is shaping both immunity and overall health.

Division

The Petter Brodin’s research group located at Biomedicum, Karolinska Institutet and belong to the Unit of Clinical Pediatrics, which is a broad, multi-disciplinary unit at the Department of Women’s and Children’s Health. The group develops and applies experimental and computational research methods for systems-level analyses of the human immune system. The aim of the team is to understand immune systems’ variation in health and disease and the regulatory mechanisms underlying such variation and adaptation to environmental influences. Another important focus is the development of immune systems in early life. The group is half experimental and half computational, with an interdisciplinary environment.

Your mission

The responsibilities of this candidate in the lab will mainly involve:

1. Miniaturized co-culture experiments of PBMCs and microbial-derived peptides, proteins or entire bacterial lysates.
2. Assessing single-cell level responses (proliferation, cytokine production and transcriptional regulation) in T-cells and B cells from the small cultures.
3. Preparation of sequencing libraries
4. Analysis of data obtained from these experiments and interpretation of adaptive immune response dynamics.

Your profile

To be eligible for employment as a postdoctor a doctoral degree or a foreign degree deemed to be equivalent to a doctoral degree is required. This eligibility requirement must be fulfilled at the latest at the time of the employment decision. It is considered as an advantage if you have completed your doctoral degree within the last three years, if there are special reasons, your degree may have been completed earlier.

The successful candidate must have prior experience in molecular biology, microbiology, some cell biology such as cytometry experimentation and cell staining and sample processing, sample acquisition, experience in analyzing cytometry data by FlowJo. Working with cell cultures is important experience for this role. The successful candidate must be thriving in interdisciplinary environments and should be dedicated to performing the tasks assigned in the lab error free and with great care. The candidate must be comfortable to work both independently and in collaboration with the dry and wet lab teams. The candidate must have good communication skills in English as the team is multicultural and interdisciplinary.

A selection will be made among qualified applicants on the basis of the following criteria:

1. Strictly documented experience in some of the aforementioned requirements without which we do not encourage the candidates to apply
2. Proven experience of molecular biology experiments, cell biology, flow/mass cytometry.
3. A background in immunology is valuable.
4. Prior lab experience through documented publications and knowledge in biology.
5. Motivation letter showing specific interest in the project and job description above as per the strict requirements

The qualifications of the applicants will be evaluated on an overall basis.

What do we offer?

A creative and inspiring environment with wide-ranging expertise and interests. Karolinska Institutet is one of the world's leading medical universities. At Karolinska Institutet, we conduct successful medical research and hold the largest range of medical education in Sweden. At KI, you get to meet researchers working with a wide range of specialisms and methods, giving you ample opportunity to exchange knowledge and experience with the various scientific fields within medicine and health. It is the crossover collaborations, which have pushed KI to where it is today, at the forefront of global research. Several of the people you meet in healthcare are educated at KI. A close relationship with the health care providers is important for creating groundbreaking top quality education and research. Karolinska Institutet is also a state university, which entitles you to several benefits through our collective agreement.

Location: Solna, Biomedicum

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)
• A motivation letter

Welcome to apply at the latest May 22 2024.

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

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