Two years Postdoctoral position on Marine Plankton Communities Metabolic 
Modelling

Marine plankton encompass highly diverse species assemblages across
various environmental conditions, and is pivotal to key ecosystem
services, ranging from biological carbon pump, marine food web or impact
on major biogeochemical cycles.

Throughout more than 15 years of expeditions, the Tara Ocean Consortium
gathered a unique collection of samples covering a wide diversity
of marine environments to describe composition and biological
activities of marine plankton communities, and already contributed
to significant breakthroughs in understanding this set of living
organisms (cf. Tara Ocean Foundation et al. 2023. Nature Microbiology
[https://doi.org/10.1038/s41564-022-01145-5] for recent a review and
prospective).

What are the biological functions that shape the building of plankton
communities? What are the metabolic interactions within a given
community? What is the metabolic impact of viral infection? Can
we decipher the impact of environmental parameters (e.g. nutrients
availability) on biological functions, and vice versa? These are some
of the research questions that are addressed in our group.

In this context, we propose a 2 years post-doc position at CEA/Genoscope,
near Paris (France), to model metabolic interactions within marine
plankton communities (from viruses to unicellular eukaryotes) sampled
in the context of the Tara Oceans campaigns, and their intertwining
with environment.

This project will take advantage of a new top-down metabolic modelling
system for unicellular phototroph eukaryotes (PhotoEukStein, Burel et
al. 2023. BiorXiv [https://doi.org/10.1101/2023.05.22.541783]) combined
with existing methods and resources for prokaryotes, and metabolic
niche modelling techniques (Régimbeau et al. 2022. Ecology Letters
[https://doi.org/10.1111/ele.13954]; Régimbeau et al. 2023. BiorXiv
[https://doi.org/10.1101/2023.11.23.568447]).

Research will take place within the Ocean EuKaryotes SYstems biology
and GENomics (OEKSYGEN) group of the Metabolic Genomics research unit
at Genoscope (CEA �" CNRS �" Université Paris Saclay) in Evry, France.

Salary ranges from 32 to 35k€ net per year, including health coverage.

Position is to start as soon as possible.

Required qualifications:
-     Ph.D. by the time of start date in metabolic modelling, 
bioinformatics, genomics, or some equivalent.
-     Excellent communication (verbal and written) and
organizational skills.
-     Positive attitude and desire to work as part of a
dynamic, multi-disciplinary team.
-     Strong expertise in bioinformatics, metabolic
modelling, genomics.

Preferred qualifications:
-     Fluency in Python or Perl, and R.
-     Expertise in metabolic modelling.

The application should contain a short letter of motivation, a CV with a 
short description of prior research experience, copy of transcripts, and 
contact information for 2-3 references.

Informal inquiries prior to application are welcome.
Contact and application to be sent to: Eric Pelletier 
(eric.pelletier@genoscope.fr)

Eric Pelletier - Research Director - CEA / Genoscope
Ocean EuKaryotes SYstems biology and Genomics - OEKSYGEN
+33 160 872 519