The Institute of Evolutionary Biology is looking for a a PhD student

Application deadline: 10th September 2024 

Reference: PhD student position

More information: 

Which are the most abundant protist species in the world’s sunlit oceans, and what roles do they play in global marine ecology? We seek a motivated, curious PhD student to join our team to answer these questions, by isolating abundant, unknown protist species and transforming them into new model organisms to study ocean ecology and evolution.

First, we will collect marine water samples, isolate novel target species, and characterize their cell biology, behavior, life history and interspecies interactions with time-lapse, fluorescence and electron microscopy. Next, we will sequence and assemble their genomes/transcriptomes in order to provide an initial glimpse of their metabolic potential. Finally, we will interrogate global metatranscriptomic data sets to build hypotheses about each new species’ ecological characteristics, and then test these hypotheses in our lab cultures, with the goal of describing how these globally abundant protists influence oceanic ecosystems. Along the way, we hope that discoveries we make on these currently unknown organisms will influence our understanding of eukaryotic evolution and diversity.

Research group

The BEAP Lab’s (https://www.beaplab.org), Daniel Richter

Send Curriculum Vitae to:

 Daniel Richter ([email protected]) with the subject line “PhD student position” and (1) their CV, (2) a motivation letter describing their interest in the project, and (3) contact information of two potential references.