PhD student bioinformatics: Phage genomic modules: data mining, visualisation, and databasing

Job advertisement

Vacancy /2026

Closing date:

The Friedrich Schiller University Jena is a dynamic and innovation-driven university centrally located in Germany. With a broad range of disciplines, it shapes the future through excellent research and teaching. Its scientific excellence is reflected in the profile areas Light – Life – Liberty, which provide pioneering insights and sustainable solutions for the society of tomorrow. Through close collaborations with leading research institutions, innovative companies, and renowned cultural organizations, it advances interdisciplinary developments.

With around 17,000 students and approximately 10,000 employees, it defines Jena as a vibrant, internationally connected city of science and innovation.

The professorship of the Viral Ecology and Omics (VEO) seeks to fill the position of a:

commencing on the 1st of April 2026 or as soon as possible thereafter.

We offer a part-time position (75%, 30 hours per week) initially offered as a fixed-term position until the 31st of March 2029. A total contract term of four years is planned.

The project is part of a German-French consortium that aims to identify, characterise, visualise, and disclose phage genomic modules: set of co-evolving genes in bacteriophages. You will be embedded in the Cluster of Excellence Balance of the Microverse () and the virus database team based in the RNA Bioinformatics lab at FSU Jena (). The Cluster combines expertise in life, material, optical and computational sciences to elucidate fundamental principles of the interactions and functions in microbial communities in diverse habitats.

We aim to identify the shared characteristics of disturbed or polluted ecosystems as well as infectious diseases on the microbiome level and develop strategies for their remediation by targeted interventions.

The Viral Ecology and Omics Group () aims to study the role of viruses in the Microverse. To do this, we combine microbiological and eco/evolutionary experiments with molecular biology, microscopy, (meta-) genomics, bioinformatics, artificial intelligence, and computational modelling. Our wet lab manager oversees a level S1/S2 wet lab featuring a state-of-the-art laboratory automation system with high throughput automatic plate reader, microscopy, microbiology, and molecular biology facilities.

Our dry lab manager supports access to bioinformatics tools and databases on the FSU high-performance compute cluster, which consists of ~100 CPU and 12 GPU nodes, dedicated interactive and visualization nodes, and five high-memory (up to 4TB) nodes with access to global genomic and metagenomic datasets on our 2+ petabyte storage disks.

The Virus Database (virjendb.org) team is funded by NFDI4

Microbiota, the National Research Infrastructure for Microbiota research consortium, which provides tools, infrastructure, training, and services to the microbiome research community in Germany and beyond. VirJenDB integrates publicly accessible virus sequences and metadata across all virus taxa. If you believe in organizing today’s knowledge to improve tomorrow’s virus research, are driven by scientific curiosity, and work best in a team, we encourage you to apply and help us advance FAIR and Open virus research infrastructure.

This position is situated in a collaborative and intellectually stimulating environment where your contributions can advance the field.

• With your advisors, design and perform analyses to address the research questions.
• Analyse your results in the context of literature and public (meta-) ‘omics data.
• Develop web-integrated visualizations to gain scientific insights from virus
  -omics datasets.
• Take initiative to communicate and discuss your results with wet- and dry-lab group members.
• Report your findings in publications and presentations at international scientific platforms.
• Support Masters students and undergraduate project students.

• A BSc or MSc in bioinformatics with extensive coding experience (Python, Java/React).
• Experience with databases and full-stack development,…