We currently offer a PhD position in the field of “Innate immune sensing of viruses” with particular emphasis on nucleic acid–host interactions. You will be working on nucleic acid binding proteins and assessing their functionality in innate immune recognition or virus restriction. We plan a combination of unbiased -omics, loss of function and gene-editing approaches in combination with hypothesis testing in order to facilitate our understanding of virus sensing, virus restriction and control of viral diseases. Particular emphasis will lie on the characterization of proteins that regulate RIG-like receptor activity and the associated signalling events. You will use standard molecular biology techniques including virus infection assays, western blotting, qPCR and ELISA and, in addition, employ unbiased approaches such as proteomics and transcriptomics analyses. Moreover, in collaboration with other groups, we plan to test the activity of your candidate proteins in in vivo models.

You will work at the campus of the “Klinikum Rechts der Isar” (Max Weber Platz) with an international team of scientists and tightly collaborate with scientists contributing to the TRR237 (https://www.trr237.uni-muenchen.de/index.html). The communication language is English, and networking skills are essential. Knowledge and interest in innate immunity and virus-host interactions are required, and experience in cell culture or molecular biology is a plus; you should also have basic knowledge in programming (e.g. “R” or “python”) and some affinity to large-scale data analysis and statistics.

Please send a brief motivation letter that states previous experience, grade report and the names of 1-2 referees to andreas.pichlmair@tum.de

We are looking forward to your application,
Andreas Pichlmair & team

Relevant publications:
Pennemann et al., Nature Communications 2021; Andersen et al., EMBO J. 2023; Bergant et al., Nature Communications 2023; Tsukamoto et al., Science 2023