CeMM International Postdoc Program (Vienna, Austria) Pre-ERC Postdoc Program in Cellular, Molecular and Digital Medicine (m/f/d)

We are recruiting a group of postdocs who are eager to pursue ground-breaking biomedical research, and we will help them to establish themselves as future scientific leaders. This postdoc program is designed to prepare postdoctoral researchers for a successful ERC Starting Grant application or equivalent and for an independent research career in top research organisations in Europe and around the world.

The postdoc program is based at the CeMM Research Center for Molecular Medicine of the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna, one of Europe’s leading centres for basic biomedical research – with clinical translation in mind. Our partners are the Medical University of Vienna and the St. Anna Children’s Cancer Research Institute (CCRI). Selected candidates will join one of CeMM’s research groups for 3 to 6 years, addressing ambitious research questions in areas such as cancer, immunology, chemical biology, epigenetics, metabolism, genomic medicine, and ageing research. Research projects will focus on medically relevant problems, including disease mechanisms, modern therapeutics, and diagnostic strategies. On top of this, postdocs will receive extensive career development and leadership training from the entire CeMM Faculty and additional experts in a highly collaborative and supportive environment.

What we offer:

• A unique blend of a frontier research environment at top level with a strong medical and translational focus through the hospital setting and the connections to biotech and pharma.
• An international group of highly collaborative colleagues that will help you achieve your scientific and career goals.
• Top-notch environment with the ideas, projects, resources, infrastructure, collaborations, and mindset for ground-breaking research.
• Excellent track record of past postdocs who have become internationally successful principal investigators, professors, entrepreneurs.
• Strong focus on disease biology and translational research: cancer, metabolic disorders, inflammation/infection, aging, drug discovery.
• Interdisciplinary projects connecting biology with medicine, experiments with computation, and discovery with translation.
• Unique opportunity to engage in close interactions with physicians and clinical researchers at the Medical University of Vienna on one of Europe’s largest medical campuses.
• Opportunities to collaborate with industry (biotech/pharma) and to get involved in academic start-up/spin-off companies.
• Training program in project management, scientific writing, visual communication, entrepreneurship, leadership, and data science.
• Special training for writing successful ERC Starting Grants as a ‘ticket’ to an outstanding academic career.
• Being part of a thriving academic and social community in Vienna, one of the cities with the best quality of life in the world.
• A competitive postdoc salary of EUR 4,752.30 gross monthly (following the recommendations of FWF), paid 14 times yearly.
• The CeMM employment contract includes full insurance (health, accident, pension) and a one-off payment for moving from abroad.
• CeMM’s HR department and administrative team offer support with relocation, visa applications, onboarding, family support, etc.

Whom we are looking for:

• Candidates who want to pursue innovative biomedical research and substantially advance their scientific career.
• Candidates with international professional experience and enhanced potential to receive an ERC Starting Grant in the future.
• Open to both PhD (natural sciences) and MD (medical sciences) holders.
• From a variety of academic backgrounds: molecular biology, biomedical research, bioinformatics, biochemistry, bioengineering, etc.
• With the motivation, skills, experiences, and initial achievements (subject to academic age) to qualify for a competitive postdoc program.
• Required are scientific quality and originality, as well as a collaborative and interdisciplinary mindset.

Potential Projects

We are open to ideas that fit into the broader scope and mission of the CeMM Research Center for Molecular Medicine and expressions of interest in the research of all groups, but concrete projects and groups offering positions are:

• Multiscale mechanobiology of tissue organization (Abdel Fattah Lab). Investigating how mechanical forces and ECM remodelling instruct cellular decision-making and coordinate tissue-level organization using in-vitro human pluripotent stem cell-derived model systems of healthy and injured cells, timelapse microscopy, image analysis, transcriptomics, simulations and bioengineered tools.
• Bioinformatics & ML/AI (Bock Lab). Integrative analysis of single-cell multi-omics and spatial imaging data in cancer, immunology, organoids, etc., in the context of the Human Cell Atlas (single-cell analytics) and/or the ELLIS European Lab for Learning & Intelligent Systems (ML/AI).
• Genome engineering & single-cell biology (Bock Lab). Development of innovative technologies for biomedical research, for example building upon our work on high-content CRISPR screening (CROP-seq), epigenetic cell states, CAR T cell therapy, or synthetic biology.
• Chromatin metabolism (Kubicek Lab). Linking central pathways of folate and one carbon metabolism to chromatin remodeling and gene regulation by chemical biology, proteomics and functional genomics.
• Dysregulation of systemic immunity in cancer (Maier Lab). Areas of interest include: immune niches in the premetastatic lymph node; evolution of systemic immune dysregulation in therapy resistance; immune-vascular interactions in aged lymph nodes.
• Uncovering the histological and organ architectural basis of tissue-specific aging using large-scale spatial omics datasets and deep learning for precise predictors of biological age and targeting age associated disease (Rendeiro Lab).
• Chromatin modifiers in haematopoiesis and leukaemia (Seruggia Lab). We use in vitro and in vivo genome editing to identify and characterize new cancer vulnerabilities. We are interested in the epigenetic machinery in leukemia, in non-mutational cancer evolution and in the role of enhancers in disease.

The Institute

CeMM is an international research institute of the Austrian Academy of Sciences and a founding member of EU-LIFE. The mission of CeMM, the Research Center for Molecular Medicine of the Austrian Academy of Sciences is to achieve maximum scientific innovation in molecular medicine to improve healthcare. At CeMM, an international and creative team of scientists and medical doctors pursues free-minded basic life science research in a large and vibrant hospital environment of outstanding medical tradition and practice. At CeMM, an international and creative team of scientists and medical doctors pursues free-minded basic life science research in a large and vibrant hospital environment of outstanding medical tradition and practice. CeMM’s research is based on post-genomic technologies and focuses on societally important diseases, such as immune disorders and infections, cancer, aging and metabolic disorders. CeMM operates in a unique mode of super-cooperation, connecting biology with medicine, experiments with computation, discovery with translation, and science with society and the arts. CeMM discovers and develops technologies to explore human biology with the purpose of defeating disease at its roots. Because Science is our Medicine! CeMM trains a modern blend of biomedical scientists and is located at the campus of the General Hospital and the Medical University of Vienna. CeMM is a proud recipient of the HR Excellence in Research Award (HRS4R). This award indicates that CeMM takes care of the well-being of its employees, that the recruitment process is open, fair, and transparent, and that CeMM offers professional appraisals and career development procedures.   More than 150 people from 49 nationalities are working at CeMM. The institute promotes equal opportunity and harbours a mix of different talents, backgrounds, competences, and interests. www.cemm.at

Eligibility Criteria:

• You must hold a PhD (or will have been awarded your PhD by the time of starting the Pre-ERC Postdoc Program) and your PhD defence date must be no earlier than 2022.
• You must have at least one first-author publication published by the time of starting the Postdoc.

Application

Please apply online at https://cemm.onlyfy.jobs/job/pj0r3xkk with 1) a cover letter including a short summary of research interests and mentioning which research group(s) at CeMM you would be potentially interested in joining, 2) curriculum vitae (CV), 3) academic transcripts, 4) contact details of three referees and 5) candidates will be asked to record a short video answer explaining their motivation to join the CeMM Pre-ERC Postdoc Program. Applications received by 15 September 2024, 11:59 pm CEST will be considered. The preferred starting date is March 2025 or earlier.

Selection Process:

Shortlisted candidates will be invited to participate in online panel interviews with CeMM Faculty members, which will take place at the end of October 2024. At the end of the selection process, candidates will be asked to submit their preference regarding research groups they would like to work with, which may be identical or different from the original choice indicated in the cover letter.

Information session

At 10:00 am and 5:00 pm CEST on 28 August 2024, CeMM will host an online information event where you will be able to find out more about doing a postdoc at CeMM and applying to the program as well as have the chance to meet and talk directly with current pre-ERC program postdocs. To take part in this event, please sign-up here Postdoc Open Day - CeMM or visit the postdoc program page of the CeMM website.

Additional information

City: Vienna

Position type: Full-time employee

Start of work: 03.03.2025

Responsible

Matthew Spencer