PhD in Microbiome Modulation for Resilient Soils & Plants

AIT Austrian Institute of Technology GmbH; Tulln an der Donau; On-site; EUR 29,000 - 34,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Canteen and meal allowance

Pension fund

Two weeks paid paternity leave (Papa‑W

Travel support for conferences

Career development opportunities

Networking events

Job summary

The AIT Austrian Institute of Technology GmbH is inviting applications for a PhD Thesis position in the Bioresources unit at Tulln, near Vienna. The project focuses on functional validation of microbiome modulators for soil-plant systems and developing prediction models to enable data-driven advances.

You will work on plant trials, microbiome profiling, phenotyping, and environmental metadata integration, applying statistics and machine learning to derive robust verifier criteria for

Qualifications

• Master's degree in microbiology, microbial ecology, plant sciences, bioinformatics, environmental biotechnology, agricultural sciences or a related field.
• Experience in standard microbiological and molecular biological methods, plant experiments execution and phenotypic analysis, sequence-based microbiome data analysis.
• Basic knowledge of statistics, R/Python or bioinformatics.
• Strong interest in soil-plant microbiomes, microbial inoculants, biostimulants or microbiome engineering.
• Interest in interdisciplinary work between microbiology, plant science and data science.
• Ability to work independently while contributing to a collaborative research environment.
• Very good command of English (spoken and written). German knowledge is beneficial.

Responsibilities

• Contribute to the ARA-BIO research acceleration platform by developing a first functional verifier for soil-plant microbiome modulators.
• Curate and structure microbiome, plant phenotype and environmental metadata for selected soil-plant use cases.
• Select candidate microbiome modulators based on existing strains, DMCs and available data.
• Conduct controlled tests to assess the effects on plant performance, microbiome composition and functional read-outs.
• Apply statistical and machine-learning approaches to link microbiome patterns, metadata and phenotypic outcomes.
• Define experimental pass/fail criteria, assay limitations and failure modes for a first ARA-BIO functional verifier.
• Collaborate with interdisciplinary teams working on data-driven microbiome solutions, improved crop production and research acceleration platforms.
• Prepare scientific high-quality publications and contribute to project reports, presentations and stakeholder communication.

Skills

English proficiency

Independent work

Interdisciplinary collaboration

Lab skills

Statistical analysis

R/Python

Education

Master’s degree in microbiology or related field

Tools

R

Python

Job description

The AIT Austrian Institute of Technology GmbH is inviting applications for a PhD Thesis position in the Bioresources unit at Tulln, near Vienna. The project focuses on functional validation of microbiome modulators for soil-plant systems and developing prediction models to enable data-driven advances.

You will work on plant trials, microbiome profiling, phenotyping, and environmental metadata integration, applying statistics and machine learning to derive robust verifier criteria for