Opportunities

Are you interesting in conducting an independent fellowship (post-doc) at the intersection between genomics, immunology, and evolutionary biology? We have an exciting opportunity for someone to join a collaboration between the University of Aberdeen (United Kingdom) and Aarhus University (Denmark, specifically Prof. Trine Bilde and Dr Jesper Bechagaard). We have a resource of 68 RNA sequences already available from an experiment exposing social spiders to a bacterium, a fungus, and a control over 4, 12, 24, and 48 hours. We are looking for someone excited to analyse this dataset to discover the temporally dynamic genetic response of social spiders to different infection threats (building on our past work), and to write a fellowship application based around this dataset and other related work (mostly likely on social spiders in the lab and/or field, but other systems such as cockroaches are available). We will fully support the applicant in the development and writing of the fellowship application and are happy to discuss any and all ideas for research topics. Suggested fellowships include: NERC independent fellowships (2024 call yet to be announced), the Daphne Jackson fellowship (always open – for those having taken a career break for family, health or caring reasons), the Royal Society’s Dorothy Hodgkin fellowship (open, closes 29 October – for those that require flexible working due to personal circumstances), the Newton International (opens 23 January 2024 – non-UK only), and the Research Fellowships and International fellowships from the Leverhulme Trust (both open, deadline 7 November).

If you are interested, please email David at david.fisher@abdn.ac.uk to find out more and to discuss ideas. If you know anyone who might be interested, please pass this message along.

I am always open to those interested in conducting both graduate and post-doctoral work with me on how behaviour, and social interactions in particular, can influence evolution. If you would like to pursue a Marie Skłodowska-Curie fellowship or any other post-doctoral fellowship, please contact me through the People and Contact page so we can chat about potential projects