PhD: Predictive Microbiome Modulators for Resilient Crops

FWF; Niederösterreich; On-site; EUR 29,000 - 34,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Canteen & meals

Coffee & fruit baskets

Healthcare benefits

Pension fund

Family benefits

Paternity leave

Travel support for conferences

Training opportunities

Job summary

The AIT Austrian Institute of Technology in Austria invites applications for a PhD Thesis position in the Bioresources competence unit. The project focuses on functional validation of microbiome modulators for soil-plant systems and development of prediction models to enable data-driven advances.

The central objective is to establish a reproducible verification workflow for soil-plant microbiome modulation, with plant trials, sequencing, phenotyping, and metadata integration.

Qualifications

• Master's degree in microbiology, microbial ecology, plant sciences, bioinformatics or a related field.
• Experience with standard microbiological and molecular methods and plant experiments.
• Familiarity with microbiome data analysis and statistics basics.
• Interest in interdisciplinary work across microbiology, plant science and data science.
• Fluent in English; German is a plus.

Responsibilities

• Contribute to the ARA-BIO research acceleration platform as part of a functional verifier.
• Curate microbiome, plant phenotype and environmental metadata for use cases.
• Select candidate microbiome modulators based on data.
• Conduct controlled tests to assess effects on plants and microbiomes.
• Apply statistical and ML approaches to link microbiome and phenotypic outcomes.
• Prepare scientific publications and project reports.

Skills

Microbial ecology

Plant sciences

Bioinformatics

Statistics basics

Independent worker

English proficiency

Education

Master’s degree in microbiology or related field

Tools

R

Python

Bioinformatics tools

Job description

The AIT Austrian Institute of Technology in Austria invites applications for a PhD Thesis position in the Bioresources competence unit. The project focuses on functional validation of microbiome modulators for soil-plant systems and development of prediction models to enable data-driven advances.

The central objective is to establish a reproducible verification workflow for soil-plant microbiome modulation, with plant trials, sequencing, phenotyping, and metadata integration.