PhD Position in Organic Geochemistry and Soil Microbiology

Your position

Soil is a critical storage pool for carbon in Earth's surface. How carbon cycling will change in soils as a result of anthropogenic climate forcing remains unclear, in part because of limited mechanistic understanding of how microbial metabolism and diversity combine to affect carbon portioning between microbial biomass and respiration (known as carbon use efficiency or CUE). In central Europe, increased drought frequency and intensity is likely to impact carbon cycling and CUE in soils in the near future, due to changes in the availability of organic matter as moisture content decreases, and to changes in the composition of organic matter input from plants. To improve our process-based understanding of how carbon cycling will change in the soils of central European forests under drought, the SNSF funded project “Drought Impacts on soil microbial metabolism in European foRests (DRIER)” will develop and apply a novel tool to quantify changes in the central carbon metabolism of soil microbial communities. Within the context of this larger project, the PhD student will conduct soil mesocosm experiments and collect soil cores from an ongoing drought manipulation at a forest site near Basel. The PhD student will integrate compound-specific isotopic data from PLFAs with metabolomic, metatranscriptomic, and metagenomic analyses to determine the impact of drought on carbon cycling in forest soils. The project includes a mixture of practical work in the forest, greenhouse, and laboratory, as well as data analysis.

Your profile

We are looking for a researcher with a Master's degree in geochemistry, soil science, microbial ecology, microbiology, or a related discipline. Experience with compound specific stable isotopes OR with environmental DNA is highly desirable, but not required. The ability to work both independently and within a team, as well as good communication skills including fluency in English are essential.

We offer you

The PhD student will be part of a research team funded by a Swiss National Science Foundation Starting Grant to Prof. Dr. Nemiah Ladd. Funding is available for a total of four years. We offer an international, multidisciplinary work environment and excellent research infrastructure. Compensation is according to the guidelines of the Swiss National Science Foundation (www.snf.ch) and the PhD student will be employed full time (100 %).