Postdoc in Highly-Multiplexed Tissue Imaging based Precision Medicine

Postdoc in Highly-Multiplexed Tissue Imaging based Precision Medicine in the Bodenmiller Lab at the University of Zurich and ETH Zurich

The project and position:

Cancer is a complex tissue disease that involves multiple cell types including tumor, immune, and stromal cells. These cells closely interact and influence each other to drive disease progression. Comprehensively characterizing the cellular components and understanding how the different cells interact in the tumor ecosystem is critical to identification of the most appropriate treatment for each individual patient.

Our group is among the leading pioneers in the development and application of single-cell proteomic approaches for the comprehensive analysis of tumor ecosystems in precision medicine. Our imaging mass cytometry approach enables simultaneous visualization of over 50 proteins and transcripts in single cells in tissues (Nature Methods2014&2017&2023, Nature Cancer 2022). Application of our approaches to breast cancer and other cancer types revealed novel tumor and immune cell phenotypes and tissue structures associated with clinical parameters such as survival (Cell, 2017 &2019, Nature 2020, Science Immunology 2022). Over the last years, we established highly-multiplexed tissue imaging by mass cytometry in the clinical trial setting to support cancer patient treatment decisions and showed that the resulting data are highly informative for clinicians (Cancer Cell, 2021).

We are seeking a highly motivated postdoctoral fellow who will study tumor ecosystem structure in depth and especially how this information can be used to predict patient treatments. The project will focus on suspension and imaging mass cytometry experiments using human tissues and organoid models in order to understand tumor ecosystem rules that can guide treatment selection for patients. The project will be associated with two clinical projects (Tumor Profiler and Swiss Precision Oncology) providing a unique opportunity to collaborate with clinicians, statisticians, and computational scientists to bring real benefit to cancer patients. The postdoctoral fellow will be located in Zurich.

In this position you will:

• work in a collaborative and interdisciplinary team at the interface of the clinic, academia, and industry.
• generate and analyze complex, high-dimensional, spatially resolved single-cell data to be translated to the clinic.
• publish as a lead author in highly visible journals.

You must be a highly motivated Ph.D.- or M.D./Ph.D.-level researcher with a passion for science who would like to work in a collaborative multidisciplinary research environment that combines quantitative biomedicine, tumor biology, bioinformatics, and biomedicine.

Ideally, you have:

• acquired your Ph.D. recently (maximum of 4 years ago).
• experience in single-cell analysis and/or tissue imaging approaches.
• a bonus is expertise in statistical and machine learning approaches for analysis of large single-cell datasets (being a pure experimentalist must not stop you from applying, we will teach you all the computational methods that you will need). 
• a desire to work in a collaborative environment.
• an excellent proficiency in English (German is optional).

To apply:

Send by email a cover letter (including an explanation of your motivation), your CV, and the contact information of at least two references to Prof. B. Bodenmiller ([email protected] ). This position is available starting immediately. Applications will be considered until the position is filled.