13 Postdoctoral Fellowship at University of Helsinki, Finland

FooDrug aims at high standards in quality, safety, acceptability and sustainability of emerging technologies in food and medication production, including promising yet contested alteration of an organism’s genome for agri-food and pharmaceutical applications. Addressing food and nutritional security requires novel ways of producing sustainable, safe, affordable, healthy and flavourful food. Europe alone faces numerous challenges related to the rise in obesity, accessibility of high-quality foods, the impacts of climate change on food systems, and the social, cultural and regulatory requirements for the transition to sustainable diets. Similarly, drug and medication security are challenged by the high costs of development, manufacture and distribution, evaluation of preclinical safety and efficacy, and the dependence of drug manufacturing on international supply chains. FooDrug focuses on tackling these challenges by uniting research across 9 units: the Faculties of Agriculture and Forestry, Pharmacy, Educational Sciences, Law, Science, Social Sciences, Veterinary Medicine and Medicine, and the Institute of Biotechnology (a core unit of HiLIFE). 

This project aims to develop machine learning models for large-scale pan-cancer multiomics data. We build on our previous work (e.g., Sanjaya et al. Genome Medicine 2023; Pohjonen et al. arXiv 2024), developing the new models on the LUMI supercomputer and evaluating them on real-world data (e.g., in iCAN) in collaboration with precision cancer medicine experts. We strive to revolutionize cancer care through the power of massive data and machine learning!

We are seeking two postdoctoral researchers or one postdoctoral and one doctoral researcher for: (i) Remote sensing advised country-wide genotype-phenotype linking, and (ii) Country-wide study of genetic adaptation and population structure dynamics in a changing climate. In the project, you will analyse whole-genome data from birches collected from Finnish forests. After selecting the individuals to be collected and sequenced, you will associate the data to remote sensing-based phenotypic and climate data. You will perform population genetic analyses and simulations to study the effect of adaptation, hybridisation and past demographic events on potential future persistence under climate change. Your findings will be readily transferred to the practitioners, as the Natural Resources Institute of Finland is a consortium member and the main tree breeder in Finland.

The task of the postdoctoral researcher is to carry out research related to sustainability assessment of future food system with particular focus on alternative proteins (e.g. cultivated meat, microbial proteins, precision fermented proteins, mycoproteins, algae, plant-based proteins and insects). The focus is on environmental sustainability assessment based on life cycle assessment (LCA), but also other dimensions of sustainability can be included. The postdoctoral researcher will be involved in the on-going research projects at the group but is also able to develop own research ideas. In addition, the person is expected to contribute to the preparation of funding applications, supervise/mentor MSc and PhD students and contribute to teaching activities.

A Postdoctoral Researcher position is available in the Epithelial Morphogenesis group led by Dr. Marja Mikkola at the Institute of Biotechnology, HiLIFE, University of Helsinki (https://www.helsinki.fi/en/researchgroups/epithelial-morphogenesis). We are seeking a highly motivated researcher to join our team.  We use a wide range of molecular, cellular, transcriptomic, and advanced imaging techniques, in combination with ex vivo and in vivo manipulation of developing mouse organs. The project will focus on how signaling pathways operate at the intersection of growth control and branching morphogenesis in the developing mammary gland and will use mouse mutants and techniques such as single-cell RNA sequencing and live confocal whole-mount imaging. We offer an international, inspiring, and supportive research environment and excellent research facilities with access to the state-of-the art technologies.  

The post-doctoral project aims to uncover genetic and adaptive mechanisms of the tumour associated microbiome in colon cancer (CRC) and its metastasis to distant organs. The goal is to identify microbial strain specific differences in CRC-associated strains using matched oral, normal and tumour samples and their clinical impact. The aim is to validate these CRC-associated strains using state-of-the-art organoid cultures and novel in vivo mouse models to assess their influence on tumor growth and metabolic rewiring in driving CRC. Finally, we will move beyond correlations to identify functional microbial changes with comparative microbial genomics, indels and SNPs. Our groups have relevant expertise in the above technologies, for example Rafa lab’s expertise in in vivo cancer biology, mouse and organoid models and Dwibedi lab’s expertise in human microbiome genomics and microbial adaptive evolution. 

The postdoctoral researcher will work in the research group of Professor Christian Webb and be funded by the ERC consolidator grant project CONFSTAT – Conformally invariant and near critical models in statistical field theory. The work of the postdoctoral researcher will focus on studying conformally invariant models of statistical field theory, such as the scaling limit of the critical Ising model or the Liouville model, or near critical models of statistical field theory, such as the sine-Gordon model, the scaling limit of the near critical Ising model, or the massive Thirring model.

The successful candidate will work within the research project “Structural correctness in metagenomics assembly” funded by the Research Council of Finland in the research group of University Lecturer Leena Salmela. We develop models, algorithms and data structures for high throughput sequencing data with a main emphasis on genome assembly. The research group is part of the Algorithmic Bioinformatics lab at University of Helsinki.

The amount of sequencing data has increased enormously during the last decade. To analyze the data efficiently, it needs to be assembled to genomes or represented in a compact manner. However, current tools for assembly and compaction of sequencing data produce sequences with no estimate of their correctness which severely hampers accurate estimation of the correctness of downstream analysis.  In this project we will develop novel models for estimating the correctness of genome and metagenome assembly and algorithms and data structures for computing such correctness estimates.

for a fixed term of 2 years, starting preferably by October 1st, 2025 but a later starting date is also negotiable. There will be a trial period of six months in the beginning of the employment.

The postdoctoral researcher will work in the research group of Professor Klaus Nordhausen in the project “Signal recovery in noisy spatial data”. The research group develops modern and efficient multivariate statistical methods tailored for different types of multivariate data, such as time series, spatial data, spatio-temporal data, functional data or tensor-valued observations.

The work of the postdoctoral researcher will focus on developing dimension reduction methods for multivariate spatial data which might be also of functional nature, especially in a blind source separation framework. Five percent of the working time will be allocated to teaching or supervision duties.