24 Postdoctoral Fellowship at University of Copenhagen, Denmark

The postdoctoral position is part of the research project “Urban encroachment – untangling drivers and dynamics of land-use transitions in ecologically sensitive areas” funded by the Independent Research Fund Denmark. The overarching aim of this project is to identify and promote more sustainable trajectories of urban expansion in African cities, allowing cities to accommodate rapidly growing populations, while preserving ecologically sensitive areas, benefiting from ecosystem services and building resilience to climate change. The research will entail a comparative case study of two rapidly growing cities – Accra in Ghana and Dar es Salaam in Tanzania – which are characterized by extensive informal expansion. The objectives of the research are:

• to estimate the scale and magnitude of natural areas lost in urban expansion.
• to gain insights into the motivations and logics of diverse actors involved in land-use conversions within ecologically sensitive areas.
• to develop a comprehensive understanding of how urban governance arrangements shape encroachment dynamics

We are now looking for a post-doc researcher to study the emerging scenes for Islamic art in Scandinavia. It will identify how and where interaction takes place when artistic practices intersect with Muslim piety. The artistic practices can be visual arts, music, literature or performance and the scene can be performance stages, art galleries or literary forums as well as social media and websites. The project is not geographically limited to Denmark, transnational links and expressive forms are expected – yet they should be grounded in artistic practices of Muslims in Denmark. The researcher is expected to carry out an independent research project under supervision and as a result publish two academic articles. Alternative modes of documentation and communication of the project, such as curating a digital exhibition or organizing a reading event, are also welcome.

The successful candidate for this postdoctoral position will be joining a multidisciplinary and collaborative team at Department of Computer Science, renowned for its cutting-edge research in image analysis and simulation technologies. This team is comprised of experts in various fields, creating a rich environment for innovation and interdisciplinary learning. The team operates in a highly collaborative environment, encouraging the exchange of ideas and expertise. Regular meetings and workshops are conducted to discuss progress, challenges, and strategies, ensuring a cohesive and focused approach to the project goals. Senior members of the team, including leading researchers and professors, provide mentorship and guidance. They are committed to nurturing the next generation of scientists, offering support in both research and career development. The project is part of a consortium, networking academic researchers and industrial professionals both within and outside Denmark. The other partners include world-class tech leaders on the frontiers of collaborative robots, biomedical manufacturing and automation solution, who will be sharing best practices and staying abreast of the latest developments in the scope of the project. The team is driven by a shared goal to make significant contributions to the field of data-driven robotics and smart manufacturing. There is a strong emphasis on creating practical, innovative solutions that can be translated into real-world applications.

The postdoc will be part of a project entitled Selection in Cognition funded by the Carlsberg Foundation and headed by Professor Søren Kyllingsbæk and Associate Professor Thor Grünbaum. Applicants are asked to situate and develop their research plan within the framework of the Selection in Cognition project. For more information about the project, please contact Professor Søren Kyllingsbæk, sk@psy.ku.dk or Associate Professor Thor Grünbaum, tgr@hum.ku.dk.

The larger project develops and tests a new theory of basic cognitive selection mechanisms by combining methods and perspectives from experimental psychology, cognitive neuroscience, mathematical modelling, and philosophy. The core idea is that selection in cognition may be understood as a biased competition between representations in a stochastic race (Grünbaum, Oren, & Kyllingsbæk, 2021). In a series of experiments, we have consistently shown that tasks-sets are competing biased by their importance and that this selection process is severely capacity limited (Oren, Kyllingsbæk, Dupont, & Grünbaum, 2024). We will extend our new experimental procedures and mathematical models to the study of selection in planning and problem-solving. If our conjecture is true, higher-order cognitive processes like task selection, planning, and problem-solving depend on the same type of selection.

A postdoctoral position is currently available in the group of Professor Melissa Little at reNEW Copenhagen. Her team will focus on the fundamental processes of morphogenesis during stem cell patterning to kidney tissue in vitro in order to develop novel approaches to disease modelling and tissue engineering. The application of cellular bioprinting to evaluate the processes regulating morphogenetic patterning in vitro are hoped to both develop more reproducible and high throughput approaches to disease modelling as well as improve the accuracy of morphogenesis within organoid models. To achieve this, the group utilizes human pluripotent stem cells, advanced gene editing, cellular bioprinting, state-of the-art transcriptomic and imaging approaches and bioinformatic data analyses.  Starting date for this position is the 1 September 2024, or upon agreement with selected candidates.

We are looking for positions that will focus on different aspects enhancer function and regulation, the interface with signaling and how they are influenced by the cell cycle. As a post doc in the Brickman lab, you will be working in a field of stem cell and molecular biology. You will be part of an international interdisciplinary team of scientists focusing on understanding enhancer regulation, gene regulatory networks and exploiting these networks to develop new technologies for cell type specification in vitro.  We work with in vivo and in vitro systems in both mouse and human. For this project, you will work with either mouse embryos, mouse, and human embryonic stem cell (ESCs), human Ventral Foregut stem cells, human hypoblast stem cells and three-dimensional synthetic models for human and mouse development. 

The successful candidate will join an international and interdisciplinary research group working on various aspects of normal and malignant hematopoietic stem cell biology including associated diseases such as acute myeloid leukemia. The candidate(s) will use advanced CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing technologies in primary human material to functionally assess novel regulators of normal and malignant hematopoietic stem cell biology. These regulators were identified by advanced proteomics technologies and their expression patterns are to a large degree governed by non-transcriptional mechanisms. There will be a large degree of freedom for the candidate(s) to shape and drive the research projects forward.

The project will be decided in consultation with the successful candidate and adjusted to their interests but could involve the use of functional genetic screens to identify and characterize new factors at interface of cellular stress responses and mRNA translation or developing screening strategies to identify genetic modifiers of disease biology related to these topics. We have implemented a versatile and streamlined genetic screening pipeline based on fluorescence activated cell-sorting (FACS) and ultra-deep mutagenesis in human cells (see Haahr et al. Science 2022 & Liu et al. Nat. Struct. Mol. Biol. 2024) to gain unbiased insights into how regulation of cell signaling and protein abundance changes during cell stress and how it determines cell fate. Using systematic screens for quantitative molecular readouts we can generate comprehensive roadmaps of the factors regulating our phenotype of interest. Where relevant, genetic screening approaches will be complemented by mass-spectrometry-based proteomic analysis. The biological functions and mechanistic basis of screen findings will be investigated by means of a wide range of approaches within cell and molecular biology, biochemistry, and imaging approaches. The successful candidate will also have an opportunity to take part in the development and implementation of new functional genomic tools to further our goals.

In order to understand the new ways in which contemporary mercenaries are shaped and operate, mapping, investigating, and evaluating is essential.  The primary responsibility of the successful candidate will be to undertake cutting-edge research to map contemporary mercenarism operations, including logistics, finances, weapons, personnel, and equipment transfers and to develop a database. This data will be foundational in helping the MERCURY team to understand the new trends and patterns associated with contemporary mercenary, and in turn enable an informed analysis of legal frameworks and routes to accountability. The key research question for the successful applicant is ‘to what extent have contemporary manifestations of mercenaries and mercenary-related actors shifted and changed in their nature and operations, and what are the resulting impacts on the victims of their human rights and IHL violations?’  The applicants should submit a project proposal outlining how they will approach this research question.

Recognizing people’s faces is of vital importance for social interaction. However, face recognition can be impaired by e.g., acquired brain injury, neurodevelopmental conditions and neurodegenerative diseases. At present, few well validated neuropsychological tests of face recognition are available. This makes it challenging to detect and diagnose impairment in face recognition, and to characterize the typical development across the life span. The overall question in this project is: What are the best ways to assess face recognition at different points across the life-span, and how do face recognition abilities change with development and ageing? In three subprojects, we focus on a) children and development; b) the adult population and self report, and c) ageing effects on face recognition. The project will contribute well validated neuropsychological diagnostic tools for a Danish context, and to the international literature on the development of face recognition across the lifespan. The postdoc will be involved in all three projects.

Within the Department of Food and Resource Economics, the postdoc position will be placed in the Production, Market and Policy section. The position is funded by the Danish Innovation Fund project AGRIVOLT aiming at developing in-depth understanding of the impact from using novel agrivoltaics systems in combination with use of field robots. One objective of the AGRIVOLT project is to conduct an economic and environmental impact assessment, including environmental cost and benefits, from the implementation of selected systems. Studies will be based on field trials in Flakkebjerg conducted in partnership with Aarhus University. A second objective is to study farmers and other stakeholder perceptions of using these systems.

The postdoc will join several other team members in the project to apply and develop appropriate tools to conduct and analyse relevant scenarios, including modelling and assessment of the financial and environmental cost and benefits and to conduct survey and workshop activities with farmers and other stakeholders. Results from the project are expected to appear in reputable academic journals and to be communicated to key stakeholders in the wider society.

The Section of Geography is looking for a postdoc to fill a 36 month position within the field of glaciology for the AIR-project. The project aims at expanding data and knowledge of past Antarctic glacial response to climatic changes using a variety of historical and modern sources. The successful applicant should have experience with remote sensing of ice sheets and glaciers, and preferably have a research history within Antarctic glaciology. The position will be within a larger group of glacially-interested people working on various aspects of cryospheric changes in Greenland and Antarctica. The position will also offer room for the right candidate to pursue their own research ideas.

Genome instability is a hallmark of inherited human disorders and age-related diseases such as neurodegeneration and cancer. Eukaryotic genomes are replicated by complex molecular machines called replisomes, which frequently encounter naturally occurring ‘obstacles’ that can prevent faithful DNA replication and induce genome instability. This can lead to a failure to complete replication during S-phase and a requirement for DNA synthesis to proceed into mitosis in a process called mitotic DNa synthesis (MiDAS). The Liu group aims to characterize the mechanism by which MiDAS occurs in human cancer cells.

The aim of this project is to investigate if natural and anthropogenic material surfaces serve as unrecognized hotspots for the observed and alarming distribution of antibiotic resistance genes. We here target materials typically found as debris in aquatic environments (plastics, wood, glass, lignin). You will have a central role in the project and be expected to carry out experiments to investigate biofilm formation on a range of surfaces and conduct horizontal gene transfer experiments. You will also work with cultivation (batch studies) as well as conducting long-term evolution experiments. You will be applying classical microbiological approaches,  optical and fluorescent microscopy, and spectroscopic techniques. We aim to use natural competent bacteria, and experience with gene modifications can be beneficial. It will be expected that you can work independently with the mentioned work.

Our research in the Molecular Metabolism in Cancer and Ageing Group strives to identify mechanisms that, at the molecular level, regulate muscle mass, function, and metabolism. With muscle wasting and insulin resistance being central features of cancer cachexia, ageing, and diabetes, we are uncovering the etiology of these conditions at the molecular level by studying cells, mice, and humans. In particular, we focus on how muscle wasting, and metabolic abnormalities can be improved or even reversed by exercise training.

We are located at the Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Protein Research (https://www.cpr.ku.dk/). The institute was established in 2007 at the Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences, University of Copenhagen, to promote basic and applied research.  CPR spans broad areas of protein research, ranging from structural and mechanistic understanding of protein complexes to protein pathways. The Center is structured into five complementary research programs: Proteomics, Protein Structure and Function, Protein Signaling, Disease Systems Biology and Protein Memory, each of which is supported by dedicated technology platforms. The Montoya Group is part of the Protein Structure and Function at NNF CPR, a multidisciplinary and international research center with a highly collaborative research environment and cutting-edge core facilities, such as genomics, proteomics, protein imaging, protein production and characterization, big data management platforms.

The newly established Novo Nordisk Foundation Quantum Computing Program (NQCP) is building a talented and diverse international team to create a cutting-edge program in the heart of Copenhagen, Denmark. At the Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, where the formulation of Quantum Mechanics was born 100 years ago, the ambition is to build a mission-driven full-stack approach which will involve exciting innovations at every level, from the quantum processor to the quantum-classical interface all the way quantum algorithms and applications.  The vision of the programme is to enable the development of fault-tolerant quantum computing hardware and quantum algorithms that solve important problems in the life-sciences.

NQCP is looking for a motivated postdoc to develop our activities in quantum algorithms. This role is anchored in the Algorithms & Applications area of the programme but extends out to interface with the hardware efforts that are underway. Broadly the programme is both algorithm and hardware agnostic, so a key question to be answered is whether there are combinations of algorithms (and thus use cases) and hardware specifications that will offer advantages when employed together.

The control and regulation of protein production are fundamental for living organisms. To do this, cells contain proteins known as transcription factors (TFs) that stimulate hundreds of other proteins. Some of the most pivotal TFs show distinct dynamic responses to specific situations, such as DNA damage, but a mechanistic understanding of how this translates into the regulation of genes is still lacking. Cells can form specific transcriptional hotspots known as Super enhancers (SEs) and it has been revealed that they form by the physical process of Liquid-liquid phase separations (LLPS). That the cell can create sudden changes in time (through dynamics) and space (through condensates) opens up a yet unexplored territory of ways that cells can control protein production.

The successful candidate will investigate this fundamental question by applying the theoretical framework of physics in order to study how condensates behave in the presence of a dynamical field. In the group, we aim to combine mathematical analysis with numerical simulations and data analysis of experiments from our collaborative groups and the successful candidate will take part in this work.

Despite decades of legal harmonization, the chance of receiving asylum for people from the same country still varies significantly across Europe and in the Nordics. The Nordic Asylum Law & Data Lab leverages data science to understand outcome variations in asylum decisions across countries – a problem central to migration law and wider debates related to automatisation, algorithmic bias and explainable AI. The postdoc will primarily work on large-scale decision data and asylum case file transcripts from Denmark, and use natural language processing (NLP), machine learning, and process mining to unpack and understand legal decision-making.

In addition to the Department of Computer Science, the postdoc is co-funded by the Center of Excellence for Global Mobility Law, Faculty of Law, University of Copenhagen and the Pioneer Centre for AI. Over the time span of the employment period, the postdoc will be expected to spend time at all three locations and actively contribute to research relevant to a) the NoRDASIL project (https://asylumdata.ku.dk/research/nordic-refugee-determination/) and b) a large initiative on narrative analysis in the context of the Pioneer Centre’s moonshot initiative/the European Lighthouse of AI for Sutainability (ELIAS) (https://elias-ai.eu).

Our lab is interested in understanding the immune response at mucosal barriers and surfaces to viral infections and vaccinations. A developing area of our research focuses on the airway mucosal immune response to vaccines. We have recently joined the VAXXAIR initiative, funded by the Novo Nordisk Foundation, to perform in-depth longitudinal sampling in healthy volunteers to develop infrastructure to perform small-scale in-depth mucosal sampling of the airways from trial participants in Denmark through strong teamwork with other local consortium members in the capital region of Denmark and with parallel international collaborators in the UK.

In addition, the lab also has a strong interest in the immune response to HIV infection within human tissues, particularly tissues associated with the gastrointestinal tract that is central to HIV pathology. We have developed this through our joint laboratory at the Africa Health Research Institute (AHRI). Here, we aim to better understand the compromised immune reconstitution in these tissues during long-term antiretroviral treatment (ART), with particular interest in understanding the interplay between lymphocytes involved in maintaining the intestinal epithelial barrier and gut homeostasis during HIV infection. We pursue these studies on our well-characterized human tissue cohorts developed in South Africa.

We can access state-of-the-art facilities for advanced cellular assays and spatial in situ profiling on relevant human tissue sections. These platforms will be applied to novel research cohorts sampled at mucosal surfaces to better understand the immune response at the site of infection and vaccination.

Genome editing is to a very large degree driven by developments of the CRISPR technology of which the computational strategies key in both data analysis and algorithm for optimization experimental design of data and gene editing itself. In the current project methods for multiplex gRNA design targeting network modules will be developed taking outset in existing computational strategies. The research group is involved in several computational CRISPR projects, while working on a range of bioinformatical aspects both algorithm, data and omics-wise. The research group is located on Frederiksberg Campus. Our research environment is highly international and stimulating. We frequently organize seminars, workshops, summer schools with international speakers and have retreats with our international collaborators.

The successful candidate will be able to choose one of two projects, depending on their personal interests and skillsets: either (1) using a novel proteomics approach to map protein-protein interaction networks in the DNA damage response; or (2) characterisation of spatiotemporal dynamics of homologous recombination by quantitative 3D-Structured Illumination Microscopy.

These projects will benefit from access to cutting-edge microscopy equipment, mass spectrometry, screening and computational biology infrastructure at BRIC and the Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences. Collaborations are in place locally and internationally to access additional facilities and techniques including Hi-C/Micro-Capture C, spatial transcriptomics and polymer modelling.

Please note that this post includes a significant amount of lab support tasks, and is therefore best suited for an experienced applicant with a desire to work in the lab while gaining/expanding management, organisational or teaching skills.

Crop growth and yield is determined by a range of meteorological and soil variables and how these interact temporally. Among those, water and nitrogen (N) are often the key determinants of growth, their availability to plants is influenced by irrigation and N-fertilization management. In addition, the response of crop to soil water and N status is modified by interaction with climatic conditions, i.e., air temperature and humidity. Exploring the effects of these abiotic factors on crop and unravelling their dependencies requires concurrently monitoring soil/plant water status and plant physiological responses and growth/yield performance. This knowledge is essential for optimizing irrigation and N-fertilization management in sustainable crop production, supporting the green transition in agriculture.

We are looking for a postdoc candidate with background in crop ecophysiology, soil science and plant nutrition, and plant phenomics. Relevant experience includes characterization and modelling of plant water relations, leaf gas exchange, N uptake and partitioning, N-use efficiency and water-use efficiency.

Our group works in the broad area of proteomics, genomics, and cell signaling. Recently, group identified histone H2BNTac as a new signature of bona fide enhancers (Narita et al. Nat Genet 2023). In the envisioned projects, we aim to use quantitative proteomics to further uncover the proteome-wide scope, dynamics, and enzymatic regulation of lysine acetylation and ubiquitylation. We are also interested in combining CRISPR-based genome editing with NGS-based approaches (i.e. RNA-seq, ChIP-seq, ATAC-seq) and cell biological approaches to uncover new regulatory pathways and decipher underlying mechanisms. In particular, we are interested in understanding the scope and function of lysine acetylation in gene regulation, as well as to understand the mechanisms of gene activation by cis-regulatory enhancers.

Depending on the candidate´s background, the postdoc candidate will either perform wet laboratory experiments involving cultured mammalian cells, CRISPR, and NGS-based genomic technologies, or proteomics technologies to generate large-scale datasets and to understand cellular regulatory mechanisms. Candidate with interest in data analysis is expected to perform bioinformatic analyses of next-generation sequencing data, including ChIP-seq, RNA-seq, Nascent-seq, and ATAC-seq. The candidates with experience in both wet lab and bioinformatics will be able to do both (i.e. work in the wet lab and perform bioinformatics analyses). If you would like to know more about the project(s), please contact us!