Scientist position (2 years 1.0 fte) Top Institute Food and Nutrition
Description
Top Institute Food and Nutrition (TI Food and Nutrition) is a unique public/private partnership that generates vision on scientific breakthroughs in food and nutrition, resulting in the development of innovative products and technologies that respond to consumer demands for safe, tasty and healthy foods. In TI Food and Nutrition the research is flexibly organized in themes and projects, and jointly decided on and guided by the research and industry partners. All research is carried out in the laboratories of the research organisations by multidisciplinary teams. These teams comprise leading scientists who are collaborating to achieve scientific breakthroughs of high industrial relevance. TI Food and Nutrition plays a major role in providing its industry partners with leads for the development of new, healthy foods with regard to major health concerns such as obesity and metabolic syndrome. These leads are essential for developing safe food products with excellent taste qualities, products that meet increasingly complex and specific nutritional requirements such as low fat, high protein, low salt and slow carbohydrate. Another focus lies on generating a knowledge base for use in developing fermented foods with improved functionality and which may target microbial activity in the gastrointestinal tract.
Project description
A variety of food and health-related bacteria, such as lactic acid bacteria, bacilli, clostridia and listeriae are studied in the Bio ingredients and Functionality Programme of TI Food and Nutrition. Current genomics techniques like whole genome sequencing, proteomics, metabolomics, metagenomics and microarray analysis, allow global genome and transcriptional profiling of bacterial strains and populations. In addition, high-throughput techniques are being developed that enable massive screening of strains for quantitative and qualitative traits. Subtle relations between genetic and phenotypic traits are hidden in these combined data. Their analysis is essential for understanding complex phenotypes, for understanding survival of pathogenic bacteria, for discovering novel functions for genes or for selection and improvement of industrially applied microorganisms.
Within TI Food and Nutrition, different systems and databases are used to store functional genomics and genome annotation information of different microorganisms. Such data includes genome-wide prediction of genes, their functional annotation, their regulation, and their experimental analysis using transcriptomics, proteomics, literature data mining, metabolic modelling, etc.
This project will develop an integrated genome database that stores all genome-related annotations resulting from bioinformatic or experimental analyses of a micro-organism. Objectives are:
to create an improved database system that allows storage of general genome annotation data and easy maintenance and curation of the data, and
to create user-friendly interfaces, including methods and algorithms, that allow researchers in the lab to comprehensively analyze and visualize their data by mapping to genome annotation knowledge domains.
Role Description
The Scientist will be responsible for the development of a generic, genomics-based platform for the analysis of different food and health-related micro-organisms being studied in various TI Food and Nutrition projects. The Scientist will collaborate closely with other TI Food and Nutrition scientists and researchers from industrial partners.
Main tasks and responsibilities
The candidate is responsible for:
Design, implementation, and maintenance of an integrated genomics database system and user-friendly interfaces to this database system
Delivering results in line with the project plan milestones and deliverables
Contributing to high-quality scientific papers
Collaboration with other project participants at different TI Food and Nutrition locations
Reporting to project leader and project team
Supervision of students, when appropriate
Reporting lines
The Scientist reports to the C-1007 Project leader and to a Principal Scientist.
Candidate profile
A BSc/MSc/PhD in Bioinformatics, Computational Biology, Computer Science or Informatics is required, with a clear interest or experience in the following:
Database and software design, development, implementation, management and maintenance
Programming skills in Java or other relevant language
Bioinformatics or Computational Biology
Genomics
Statistics for experimental design and data analysis
Fluent speaking in Dutch and/or English and excellent social skills are required.
This is position is for 2 years, with possibility for extension. Further information about this position can be obtained from Prof. Dr. R.J. Siezen (roland.siezen@nizo.nl) or Dr. D. Molenaar (douwe.molenaar@nizo.nl). Please send your application with CV by e-mail to personnel@tifn.nl.
http://www2.cmbi.ru.nl/groups/ba ... e-top-institute-fo/
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