PhD Position in Biology

The Department of Biomedicine is a joint effort between the University of Basel and the University Hospitals Basel. It unites basic and clinical scientists to advance our understanding of health and disease and to develop pioneering therapies benefiting the lives of patients in areas of unmet need.
With more than 70 research groups and 800 employees, the Department of Biomedicine is the largest department at the University. We are located in the heart of Basel at 6 different locations. Be part of our future.

The Boeck lab at the Department of Biomedicine is seeking a highly motivated and driven PhD student with a strong interest in infection biology to tackle pulmonary Pseudomonas aeruginosa infections using genomic and large-scale wet lab technologies.

We are a young and dynamic team, dedicated to understand the mechanisms underlying antibiotic treatment failure of life-threatening lung infections. We have developed strategies to assess bacterial behaviour and drug susceptibility at single-cell resolution and unmet scale (e.g., assessing several 100,000 drug combinations). By combining bacterial phenotyping with CRISPR-based mutagenesis or phenogenomic analyses, we strive to reveal mechanisms driving antibiotic action and promoting bacterial clearance in patients.

Your position

The Boeck team has recently established a method called Antimicrobial Single-Cell Testing, which allows to track millions of single cells using high-content live cell imaging. This project will adapt this technology to Pseudomonas aeruginosa and investigate whether distinct bacterial populations or single-cell behaviours (such as drug tolerance, persisters and heteroresistance) contribute to poor treatment outcomes. This project will be co-supervised by Prof. Urs Jenal (Biozentrum, Basel) and is embedded in the National Competence Centre in Research AntiResist.

Your profile

• Education: MSc in Microbiology, Molecular Biology or similar.
• Experience: Wet lab and/or computational biology.
• Skills: Strong drive to advance science and technologies, ability to work independently, and interact constructively within a multidisciplinary team.
• Interests: Motivated to change the treatment of P. aeruginosa infections through combining wet lab methods (including automation) and computational biology.
• Language: Proficiency in English.

• Experience with microbiological methods, fluorescence microscopy, and molecular biology.
• Computing experience, in particular with Python or R.

We offer you

• 4-year PhD position funded by NCCR AntiResist.
• International community of researchers and a stimulating student life.
• Intensive individual mentoring and supportive environment with funding opportunities to pursue an academic career and extensive ties to industry.
• Strong local and national network of inter-disciplinary research teams in academia and industry working on bacterial infections and on antimicrobials.
• Regular participation in national and international conferences.