Postdoctoral Research Scholar
Arizona State University
Arizona State University: Knowledge Enterprise: Biodesign Institute: Biodesign Health through Microbiomes
Location
Open Date
Sep 12, 2025
Description
Arizona State University’s Biodesign Center for Health Through Microbiomes, led by Dr. Rosa Krajmalnik-Brown (https://biodesign.asu.edu/Research/Centers/Health-Through-Microbiomes and http://rosylab.org/) invites applications for a Postdoctoral Research Scholar in the area of microbial ecology with a special focus on host-microbe interactions. The Postdoctoral Research Scholar will be working in a uniquely collaborative and productive lab. Dr. Krajmalnik-Brown’s lab is leading research on Microbiome and Autism, and Microbiome and Energy extraction and Microbial Ecology for environmental biotechnology applications. The Postdoc will be taking a leadership role in a Gut Microbiome funded project (microbiome-autism), will assist in other funded projects, will be exposed to many research topics associated with environmental biotechnology, and will have the opportunity to start new projects.
Priority will be given to candidates with experience working with biostatistics, functional microbial ecology analysis targeting microbial genomes, microbial pathways, microbially-produced metabolites and/or bioreactor operation as demonstrated through publications and references.
Essential Duties:
- Project management, meeting coordination, and leadership
- Experimental design and implementation, data analyses, and report/manuscript preparation
- Training and mentoring graduate and undergraduate students.
- Identifying, coordinating, and leading the writing of research proposals and seeking future funding.
- Establishing and sustaining interactions among faculty, post-docs, and students across the Centers and the University is central to the position
- Coordinating among team members
Qualifications
Minimum Qualifications:
- Applicants must have a recent Ph.D. (within the past four years) in Microbiology, Bioinformatics, Biostatistics, Environmental Engineering, Chemical engineering, Computer Science or Allied discipline
Desired Qualifications:
- Strong background in biostatistics and data authentication methodologies, including experience with tools such as MaAsLin2/3, ALDEx2, ANCOM-BC2, mixOmics, and other relevant computational packages.
- Strong programming skills in R and Python, and proficiency with Unix/Linux environments.
- Familiarity with amplicon gene sequencing, short-read metagenomics, and downstream assembly, binning, and functional annotation pipelines (e.g., SPAdes, MEGAHIT, Prokka, MetaBAT2, or similar tools).
- Proficient with microbiome-specific bioinformatics pipelines including QIIME2, MetaPhlAn, HUMAnN, StrainPhlAn, Kraken2, and Centrifuge.
- Ability to work across disciplines, on a team, or with stakeholders
- Demonstrated experience in the publication of peer-reviewed research
- Interest in host-microbiome interactions, microbe-microbe interactions, microbe-environment interactions;
- Hands-on experience with molecular biology and lab-scale bioreactor operations;
- Proven experience in handling and integrating multi-omics datasets, including metagenomics, and/or metatranscriptomics, and/or metabolomics.
- Familiarity with version control systems, particularly Git and GitHub, including cloning, managing repositories, branching, and implementing collaborative and reproducible data analysis workflows.
- Demonstrated ability to work independently as well as collaboratively in multidisciplinary teams.
- Proven track record of research productivity as demonstrated by publications in peer-reviewed journals relevant to microbiome or computational biology.
- Excellent oral and written communication skills.
- Hands on experience with large datasets and data analysis and integration
- R, tableau, or other big data stat modeling software experience
- Experience with mentoring graduate and undergraduate students.
- Experience in project management, team leadership, and effective communication
Application Instructions
Only electronic submissions will be reviewed. Incomplete applications will not be considered. To apply for this position, submit the following required application materials:
-
- Cover letter
- A complete curriculum vitae
- The names and contact information of three references (name, position, title, organization, email, and phone number).
- Optional (I.e., statement of research, two or more peer-reviewed publications.
The initial application deadline is November 9, 2025. Applications will continue to be accepted on a rolling basis for a reserve pool. Applications in the reserve pool may then be reviewed in the order in which they were received until the position is filled.