Microbial communities play essential and preponderant roles in ecosystem processes. Unfortunately, the rules that govern their assembly are still poorly understood, despite the actual consensus that such knowledge would greatly improve our ability to understand and manage microbial communities, positively impacting, for instance, agriculture, healthcare, and many environmental practices. With this background, we´re presently interested in these lines of research:

1) The in silico and in vivo validation of our community assembly conceptual framework.

2) The isolation and characterization of representative rhizosphere communities and their associated viruses using robotics-assisted culturomics.

3) The implementation of tools to monitor and dissect biotic interactions in the rhizosphere (e.g. FISH, InSeq,…).

We are a recently created emergent group (for more info on our publications, team and grants see https://aguirredecarcerlab96.webnode.es/home2/), adequately funded by the Spanish Research Agency, and can accommodate a range of projects and formative experiences within our general line of research for eager researchers with adequate experience in one or more of the following: General microbiology, Molecular Biology, Microbial ecology/Environmental microbiology, Metagenomics.

Both the candidate and PI will prepare and submit a project, synthesizing the candidate's professional interests and the group’s line of research, to the MSCA IF's Call (https://ec.europa.eu/research/mariecurieactions/actions/individual-fellowships_en). Candidates must hold a PhD and not have worked in Spain for more than 12 months in the previous 3 years at the time of submission (Sept 9th, 2021). The call offers a very significant salary (2 years, including travel and family costs), as well as training, networking and research costs for the fellow. 

The fellow will be hosted at UAM (https://www.uam.es/uam/en/inicio); while Madrid may not be as outwardly stunning as smaller cities like Granada, Barcelona or Seville, it surely remains the biggest, most cosmopolitan, vibrant and welcoming city in the country, conveniently situated in the center of the country, a short hop away from all that Spain has to offer, and with a well-connected international airport.

How to apply:If interested, email daniel.aguirre@uam.es providing a succinct description of experience and expectations, and some informative subject line (otherwise the email will be classified as spam by the institution).

Application deadline:
Start date: Flexible
Location: Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Madrid, Spain