Vacancies

Four PhD positions in the EU COFUND programme 'Evolve'

The European Union has awarded a COFUND grant to a consortium of researchers from the universities of Groningen and Leiden for a collective PhD programme called ‘Evolve’. The EUR 7.1 million programme, which is co-financed by the participating universities, will recruit and train 17 PhD students to conduct world-leading research on the origin and nature of life and its distribution in the universe.

Prof. Floris van der Tak (SRON/Kapteyn) and prof. Wouter Roos (ZIAM) are the scientific coordinators of the programme. Interested researchers are encouraged to apply before 20 October 2024. Check the Evolve website for more information on the programme and application.

Project 1: Evolution of multicellularity

Multicellularity represents one of the most significant evolutionary transitions in the history of life, and a key topic in Origin of Life research. Understanding its underlying mechanisms offers insight into how complexity arises.
Project website

Supervisors: Prof. Rampal Etienne and Prof. Sander van Doorn

Project 2: Integrating systems chemistry and evolutionary perspectives on the origin of life

The complex problem of the origin of life can be approached from different angles and scientific disciplines: while chemists may attempt to extrapolate from their understanding of self-organization processes in organochemical networks towards the first living systems, biologists may reason ‘from hindsight’, based on their knowledge of extant life and their reconstruction of the most plausible pathways that led to its emergence.
Project website

Supervisors: Prof. Sander van Doorn and Prof. Sijbren Otto

Project 3: Origin and evolution of the genetic code – a theoretical framework

A main feature in the origin of complex life is the translation system by means of the near-universal genetic code: stored information contained in large molecules (DNA) is copied onto smaller molecules (RNA) that are “read” by ribosomes, which make proteins based on the information.
Project website

Supervisors: Prof. Martijn Egas and Prof. Bregje Wertheim

Project 4: The evolutionary consequences of isolation

Oceanic islands harbor a disproportional fraction of Earth’s biodiversity, but are also host to many species that are threatened with extinction. Advantages of isolation are reduced competition, predation and parasitism, availability of new ecological niches, and opportunity for unique traits (that might become very advantageous in the future) to become fixed due to genetic drift. That is, an isolated system is a cradle for new forms of life.
Project website

Supervisors: Prof. Rampal Etienne and Prof. Sander van Doorn

GELIFES welcomes incoming PhD scholarship students with their own funding from various sources, such as CSC, CAPES/CNPq, Conacyt, Conicet, PRONABEC, DIKTI etc.