APPLICATION CLOSING DATE: 1st of September 2023
Human Technopole (HT) is a new interdisciplinary life science research institute, created and supported by the Italian Government, with the aim of developing innovative strategies to improve human health. HT is composed of five Centers: Computational Biology, Structural Biology, Genomics, Neurogenomics and Health Data Science. The Centers work together to enable interdisciplinary research and to create an open, collaborative environment that will help promote life science research both nationally and internationally.
The laboratory of Prof. Giuseppe Testa at the Human Technopole (HT) in Milan is looking for a Postdoctoral Researcher funded by the new EU project NEUROCOV (link).
The Testa lab at Human Technopole is a vibrant, interdisciplinary research community spearheading stem cell modelling to study the pathophysiological mechanisms underlying brain diseases across both genetic and environmental causes (Villa et al. Cell Reports, 2022; Caporale et al. Science, 2022; Adamo et al. Nature Genetics, 2015; Mihailovich et al. bioRxiv, 2022; Lopez-Tobon et al. bioRxiv, 2022). At the forefront of human experimental modelling, especially brain organoid technology, the group has been contributing to standard setting benchmarks of the field (Germain et al. Stem Cell Reports, 2017; Pasca et al. Nature, 2022, Lopez-Tobon et al. Stem Cell Reports, 2019; Cheroni et al. Translational Psychiatry in press, 2022), straddling multiple scales of analysis from single cell multi-omics to functional profiling and in vivo validation.
Key tasks and responsibilities:
The successful candidate will be part of the NeuroCOV project, a newly established major interdisciplinary research network focused on the neurological and neuropsychiatric manifestations of post-COVID-19, interrogating the host/virus interplay in the human brain at single cell resolution and integrating brain organoid modelling, artificial intelligence and epidemiology to deconvolute personalized trajectories of NeuroCOVID vulnerability and their population impact.
The successful candidate will develop and harness highly innovative experimental model systems to elucidate mechanisms and actionable targets of NeuroCOVID pathogenesis, benefitting from collaborations withing a cutting-edge team of experts from Germany, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, Finland, Sweden and Israel. Specifically, they will lead the experimental pipelines (including experimental design, implementation and integrative analysis) to deconvolute personalized trajectories of NeuroCOVID vulnerability in patient-derived brain organoids from longitudinally phenotyped cohorts, combining single cell multiomic profiling, cell biological and advanced imaging to elucidate the viral, neuroimmunological and neuroinflammatory components of NeuroCOVID pathogenesis.
The successful candidate will be directly engaged also in the computational analysis of the multimodal datasets produced in the NEUROCOV consortium, performing analysis and/or closely collaborating with the bioinformaticians from the Testa lab and partners, with the aim of integrating molecular and clinical phenotyping and implementing predictive modelling of NeuroCOVID vulnerability.
Job requirements
Essential requirements: