I am looking for a postdoc with a background in aquatic microbial ecology who is interested in community assembly processes, ecophysiology and how the two things might be related.

The position is financed by a Swiss National Fund project “Community assembly processes of ‘opportunistic’ freshwater bacteria”. The project explores the hypothesis that particular mechanisms of community assembly may be related to the growth strategy of freshwater planktonic bacteria. Specifically, it is to be tested if bacteria with ’opportunistic’ growth properties might disproportionally lean towards stochasticity within bacterioplankton assemblages.

What you absolutely need to have in terms of skills and expertise:

• you have worked with (natural or engineered) bacterial communities before, not just with pure cultures or microbial processes.
• you know more about bioinformatics than just 16S rRNA analysis (i.e., meta-omics) BUT you have also done lab and/or field work
• you know more about statistics than just the t-test
• you like scientific brainstorming, debating and speculation, but more than anything you like producing good hard data.
• you know the difference between microbial ecology and environmental microbiology (is there any?)
• your English is good enough to make and understand jokes (and write papers).

Don’t apply if this description does not fit to you. Don’t apply if you have not published in respectful journals.

IMPORTANT: If you are not mystified by the concept of community assembly processes and know your way around them, you have very good chances to get the job. It also helps tremendously if you have worked with freshwater bacterioplankton.

What can I offer? The position is envisaged for a period of 2 years. You get a fine Swiss postdoc salary, a bench, a desk, a computer, a coffee mug, a couple of interesting new colleagues, unlimited supply of face masks, the usual stuff. The starting date is as-soon-as-possible in 2021 (a bit unpredictable these days).

Contact & application: Please send your application per email to me (Prof. Jakob Pernthaler, pernthaler@limnol.uzh.ch) and indicate “Postdoc Application“ or “I am your new postdoc” or something similarly unambiguous in the subject line. What I want is (1) a detailed CV, (2) that you tell me about your past research and why exactly you believe that you would be the right choice (3), the name and contact information of two senior scientists who know your work and are happy to tell me more about you.