PhD position: “Modelling the drivers of reef microbialization”

This vacancy is the result of the collaboration between Utrecht University and NIOZ. The Department of Earth Sciences (UU, Theoretical Biology & Bioinformatics) the UU Metagenomics Group (MGX) and the NIOZ Department of Marine Microbiology and Biogeochemistry (MMB) are looking for a highly motivated PhD candidate, a MSc with a major in computational biology or metabolic modelling.

The departments
You will join two world-class research groups: the UU Metagenomics Group (MGX ) and the NIOZ Department of Marine Microbiology and Biogeochemistry (MMB ).
Both UU and NIOZ are truly interdisciplinary and international institutes. UU has over 30,000 students and over 5,000 faculty and staff and is consistently ranked among the world’s top universities. UU is renowned for our emphasis on inspirational research and excellent education, and equally for the familiar atmosphere and the ambitious can-do mentality of our people. Bioinformatics is one of the Focus Areas of Utrecht University. NIOZ is a world leading marine research institute performs and promotes excellent, highly multidisciplinary research on questions relating to marine systems, addressing both scientific and societal questions. With its mission ‘Blue Planet’ NIOZ serves as the national oceanographic center in the Netherlands and serves as national marine research facilitator for the Dutch scientific community.

The Project
Coastal ecosystems worldwide are under threat due to increased anthropogenic pressure. Subsequent phase shifts in the marine system are characterized by alterations in the microbiome, often associated with higher abundances of copiotrophic and pathogenic bacteria. This may create a positive feedback loop that further fosters the downward trajectory of ecosystem degradation, a phenomenon called microbialization. As microbial dynamics are both cause and consequence of ecological phase shifts, they play a pivotal role in ecosystem health. As part of a recently funded collaboration project between the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research (NIOZ) and Utrecht University (UU), you will combine large metabolomic and metagenomic datasets with microbial community modelling to improve our understanding of the structuring mechanisms behind microbialization and to identify potential intervention strategies.