08 Postdoctoral Fellowship at Umea University, Sweden

The past two decades has seen a major global focus on understanding the linkages between the aboveground and belowground components of ecosystems, and significant research effort has concentrated on understanding the feedback between plant communities, soil communities and ecosystem processes. There is also growing interest in how the linkages between these two components, and their impacts on ecosystem-level properties, drive feedbacks between the biosphere and atmosphere. Despite the profile that this topic is attracting, we still have a very limited knowledge of how aboveground-belowground linkages and their effects on ecosystems are driven by environmental context, for example about how they may vary across contrasting ecosystems, along environmental gradients, or in response to anthropogenic global change drivers.

The research will aim to fill this gap by performing measurements aimed at quantifying processes that drive ecosystem carbon fluxes and stocks in a large ongoing replicated field experiment on a group of lake islands in the boreal forested zone of northern Sweden that collectively represent 5000-year post fire chronosequence. The experiment was initiated in 1996 and involves continued removal of different subsets of the vegetation in different plots; it is now in its 29th year. This study system and experiment is unique globally and has resulted in several publications in leading journals including 7 in Science and Nature. The research will be generously funded through a 5-year grant from the Wallenberg Scholars award scheme.

We are announcing a postdoctoral position on the study of microbial community structure and genomics to work on long term experimental sites established on a group of forested lake islands in northern Sweden. The employment is fulltime for three years. The deadline for applications is April 1, 2025 and the position is expected to start in September 2025, or according to agreement. Welcome with your application!

The Department of Physics is looking for a highly motivated Postdoctoral Researcher to join “The Organic Photonics and Electronics Group” (web: Home – OPEG umu at Umeå University, Sweden. You will be part of a focused effort for the development of light-emitting electrochemical cells (LECs) for practical applications. The LEC is a novel and functional complement to the LED and the OLED since it can:
·       deliver bright area or easily patterned light emission at low voltage,
·       be thin, lightweight and flexible,
·       be fabricated in its entirety by cost-efficient ambient-air printing,
·       be highly sustainable (free from toxic and rare compounds, energy-efficient fabrication, practical recycling). 

The Morimoto Lab specializes in immunology research with a focus on evolutionary perspectives of antigen receptor diversification, leveraging non-conventional model organisms. This project aims to uncover the mechanisms of hematopoietic differentiation in the unique innate immune systems of invertebrate species, potentially involving physiological genome editing processes in the host. To achieve this, the research will employ a multidisciplinary approach, integrating conventional developmental biology with advanced techniques such as CRISPR/Cas9-based mutagenesis, light-sheet microscopy, genomics, and single-cell transcriptomics.

We are announcing an opening for a highly motivated postdoctoral researcher to join a dynamic, interdisciplinary project at the forefront of plant biology and bioengineering (for more information please visit: resydeproject.org). This two-year position (with the possibility of a one-year extension) will focus on exploring and engineering the molecular mechanisms underlying plant development, with an emphasis on symmetry-breaking processes in flowers. Symmetry breaking refers to the pivotal biological phenomenon by which initially symmetrical structures develop into complex, specialized forms—an essential process in both plant and animal development. This project leverages advanced sequencing, proteomics, genome editing, and protein engineering tools to uncover how molecular players, such as microProteins, regulate developmental pathways.

Trustworthiness is a crucial consideration in modern AI decision-making systems. As a fundamental aspect of human interaction, AI trustworthiness can be improved through transparency and explainability in robotic systems. This project aims to identify factors that may undermine the trustworthiness of data and models used in human-robot interaction, and further investigates common and specific trustworthiness issues related to fairness and safety in human-robot interaction applications. An AI trustworthiness model will be developed and validated ensuring that both data and models of human interaction are robust, especially in the selected industry use cases. 

The postdoc position is linked to the research group Deep Data Mining, which focuses on fusing data science and artificial intelligence and developing AI trustworthiness (e.g., fairness, privacy) models.   The project is part of the EU project XSCAVE whose ambition lies on large scale deployment of autonomous heavy mobile machines in earthmoving, forestry and urban logistics industries. The XSCAVE consortium involves eleven partners from all over Europe.  This offers excellent opportunities for international exchange and collaboration with leading research groups and companies in the field of AI robotics, large language modelling, simulation, mobile robotics and offroad heavy equipment.

Translation is a highly regulated cellular process, and recent findings have shown thousands of mRNAs to be regulated at the level of translation in plants as well as in other organisms. We have revealed that the components of the ribosome itself participate in the selection of mRNAs to translate. How this is achieved is currently unknown. In the project we will primarily use the Ribo-Seq methodology to characterize the translational regulation on a global level. We hope to shed more light on this process using genetic and biochemical tools and by studying the interaction of mRNAs and proteins during translational regulation.