Postdoctoral researcher in immunology and spatial transcriptomics

Do you want to contribute to top quality medical research?

We are seeking 1 to 2 skilled experimental immunologists for projects in the intersection of immunology, cancer, mucosal immunology and spatial transcriptomics, with the goal to mechanistically and functionally test immune responses and harness these for therapy. You will be employed by KI in Camilla Engbloms team and affiliated with SciLifeLab, world leaders in spatial biology. The team recently developed a new method to study B cells and B cell receptors within their tissue microenvironment using spatial transcriptomics. The team employs this tool, along with others, to spatially resolve immune responses to deepen our understanding of immune responses in cancer and beyond.

Your mission

The applicant is expected to explore ambitious questions regarding immune cell clonal dynamics in cancer and mucosal tissues using unique patient cohorts. The applicant will then test hypotheses mechanistically using pre-clinical models. As a postdoc you will work in close collaboration with other team members and collaborators.

Your profile

We are looking for a candidate with proficiency and documented research experience particularly in immunology, with a particular emphasis on high proficiency working with and independently setting up mouse models and adaptive immunology. Proficiency and documented research experience particularly in cancer immunology, antibody biology, and/or data analysis, with a particular emphasis on performing analysis of high-dimensional data, which can be sequencing and/or imaging-based. Experience working with mouse tumor models, flowcytometry, transcriptomics workflows, and microscopy are considered a strong merit. We are seeking a post-doc candidate who is passionate about answering biological questions related to immunology using cutting edge technology in interdisciplinary teams. The applicant is expected to be highly engaged, curious, and a team player. In your role it is expected to present results to general and specialized audiences. The team works together and is dedicated to fostering the next generation of scientists, so we welcome candidates who are interested to teach and mentor budding scientists.

Requirements

• PhD degree in relevant fields (immunology, cancer, mucosal immunology, cell biology, biomedicine).
• Demonstrated strong experimental skills
• Demonstrated ability to present and analyze results orally and in writing
• Fluency in oral and written English
• Documented scientific publications in relevant fields

Merits

• Experience setting up mouse models
• Expertise in cancer immunology, adaptive immunology, antibody antigen testing, transcriptomics workflows, and/or microscopy
• Prior involvement in interdisciplinary projects
• Previous grants/awards
• Medical background
• Expertise in data analysis (e.g. in R)

The position will require independent work as well as extensive collaboration with other scientists. The research requires highly interdisciplinary work involving teams of contributors; therefore, team players that are motivated to help each other are highly encouraged to apply. Please describe in your application what type of theoretical and practical expertise you would like to develop in the team, based on your previous experience and the team’s profile.

To be eligible for employment as a postdoctor, a PhD or a foreign degree deemed to be equivalent to a Swedish PhD is required. This eligibility requirement must be fulfilled at the latest at the time of the employment decision. It is considered an advantage if you have completed your doctoral degree within the last three years. If there are special reasons, your degree may have been completed earlier.

What do we offer?

A creative and inspiring environment with wide-ranging expertise and interests. Karolinska Institutet is one of the world's leading medical universities. At Karolinska Institutet, we conduct successful medical research and hold the largest range of medical education in Sweden. At KI, you get to meet researchers working with a wide range of specialisms and methods, giving you ample opportunity to exchange knowledge and experience with the various scientific fields within medicine and health. It is the crossover collaborations, which have pushed KI to where it is today, at the forefront of global research. Several of the people you meet in healthcare are educated at KI. A close relationship with the health care providers is important for creating groundbreaking top quality education and research. Karolinska Institutet is also a state university, which entitles you to several benefits through our collective agreement.

Location

The position is located within the Department of Medicine, Solna. The department consists of ten divisions and each division consists of several research groups. The position is located within the team lead by Camilla Engblom  in the Immunology and Respiratory Medicine division, and physically located at CMM and SciLifeLab. The overall goal for the team is to understand fundamental mechanisms of B cell-related immune responses in cancer (and beyond) to identify new avenues for B-cell mediated therapy. To do this, we interrogate the spatial relationships between B cell clones and their immediate niches within tissues using our in-house developed spatial transcriptomics-based technology (Spatial VDJ). Using established and newly developed algorithms, we map B cell evolution within tissues, including class switching and somatic hypermutation, and identify putative candidate tumor-regulatory antibody sequences for functional testing. In addition to the lab’s focus area, our research group has national and international collaborative projects within host-microbe interactions, vaccine research, technological development, and mucosal immunology. The lab is strongly affiliated to SciLifeLab, the birthplace for and continued world leaders in spatial transcriptomics research, which offers a unique scientific niche to spatially reconstruct B cell lineage evolution in tissues. We work closely with multiple SciLifeLab and CMM infrastructure and facilities to answer our scientific questions, resulting in a multidisciplinary research environment. Our lab aims to foster a creative, diverse, and inclusive work environment with the goal for all lab members to answer ambitious and exciting scientific questions. The lab is located at within a vibrant immunology community with expertise in inflammation, infection, allergy and autoimmune diseases

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Application

An employment application must contain the following documents in English or Swedish:

• PhD certificate
• A complete resumé, including date of the thesis defence, title of the thesis, previous academic positions, academic title, current position, academic distinctions, and committee work
• A complete list of publications
• A summary of current work (no more than one page)

KI applies individual and differentiated salary setting in accordance with our collective agreements RALS and RALS-T

The application is to be submitted through the Varbi recruitment system.

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