Postdoctoral position in the PROSE unit, INRAE (Antony, Île-de-France) on microbial omics data analysis

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INRAE presentation

The French National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food, and Environment (INRAE) is a major player in research and innovation. It is a community of 12,000 people with 272 research, experimental research, and support units located in 18 regional centres throughout France. Internationally, INRAE is among the top research organisations in the agricultural and food sciences, plant and animal sciences, as well as in ecology and environmental science. It is the world’s leading research organisation specialising in agriculture, food and the environment. INRAE’s goal is to be a key player in the transitions necessary to address major global challenges. Faced with a growing world population, climate change, resource scarcity, and declining biodiversity, the Institute has a major role to play in building solutions and supporting the necessary acceleration of agricultural, food and environmental transitions.

Work environment, missions and activities

The postdoctoral researcher will join the PROSE research unit (Bioprocesses for the Environment) at INRAE, located in Antony (Paris region), France (PROSE website). PROSE is a research unit within INRAE and affiliated with the University Paris-Saclay. It includes approximately 30 staff members, and conducts research on environmental biotechnologies. Its work spans microbial communities to large-scale processes, addressing societal challenges such as sustainable development and the circular economy. The unit fosters a transdisciplinary approach, integrating microbial ecology, bioprocess engineering, and modeling to develop innovative solutions for environmental applications.

Your activities

Project Background

Microbial ecosystems are highly dynamic and shaped by ecological principles. Advances in high-throughput sequencing and omics technologies have significantly enhanced our ability to study microbial communities at multiple levels, including taxonomy, function, and metabolic activity. However, current computational methods often treat omics data as purely numerical, overlooking the ecological context that drives microbial community assembly and function. This project aims to develop innovative statistical approaches that integrate ecological principles into omics data analysis, improving our understanding of microbial interactions and microbial ecosystem functioning.

You will be more particularly in charge of:

• Evaluating and benchmark existing ecological distance metrics and multivariate statistical approaches for microbial omics data analysis (e.g., metagenomics, metabolomics, transcriptomics).
• Developing novel or refined methods that integrate ecological knowledge into omics data analysis, providing a new dissimilarity index for microbial omics data analysis, enhancing the biological interpretability of results.
• Implementing, validating, and applying these methods to existing microbial (multi)-omics datasets.
• Contributing to scientific publications, and present research finding at international conferences.

 

Training and skills

• PhD in statistics, or in microbial ecology, or a related field
• The position is open only to candidates who have defended their PhD no more than three years before the start date of the postdoctoral contract

Expected qualifications:

• Strong proficiency in R programming

Experience needed:

• Experience in data analysis
• Familiarity with microbial omics data analysis (e.g., metagenomics, metabolomics, metatranscriptomics) or ecological data analysis is a plus

 Valuable experience:

 Expected skills:

• Demonstrated ability in scientific writing
• Interest in interdisciplinary collaboration

INRAE's life quality

By joining our teams, you benefit from (depending on the type of contract and its duration):

- up to 30 days of annual leave + 15 days "Reduction of Working Time" (for a full time);
- parenting support: CESU childcare, leisure services;
- skills development systems: training, career advise;
- social support: advice and listening, social assistance and loans;
- holiday and leisure services: holiday vouchers, accommodation at preferential rates;
- sports and cultural activities;
- collective catering.

How to apply

I send my CV and my motivation letter