Postdoctoral Research Fellowship

**We are offering a 3-year full-time postdoctoral research fellowship focused on advancing structural biology through single-crystal neutron diffraction techniques. This position focuses on visualizing critical hydrogen atoms in carbohydrate-binding proteins and their complexes using neutron diffraction along with complementary structural biology methods.**

This research fellow position is part of the EU cofund research project AMBER, Advanced Multiscale Biological imaging using European Research infrastructures, will address scientific and sectoral gaps in biological imaging ranging from molecular, through cellular, to tissue, organ and organism levels of organisation, and is coordinated by LINXS Institute of advanced Neutron and X-ray Science.

AMBER is funded by the EU Marie Skłodowska-Curie (MSCA) COFUND scheme.
Around 20 postdocs/research fellows will be recruited in the fourth call 2025, with each fellowship lasting 36 months.

AMBER has six core partners: Lund University/MAX IV, Sweden, the European Spallation Source (ESS), Sweden, the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL), Institut Laue-Langevin (ILL), France, the International Institute of Molecular Mechanisms and Machines, (IMOL), Poland, and the Leicester Institute of Structural and Chemical Biology, United Kingdom.

As a research fellow at the AMBER programme, you will acquire unprecedented medical, biological, and methodological capabilities, with a profound potential impact for Europe’s next generation of research and researchers. When you have completed the AMBER programme, you will be extraordinarily well equipped to further your career in academia, at infrastructures, in the health and MedTech sectors, and beyond. Your work may include clinical and biomedical projects. It may also include technique development work aimed at combining imaging techniques and data analysis to provide a more integrated picture of life processes in the context of health and disease.

**Qualification requirements**
Minimum requirements are:

- at least one original publication in a peer-reviewed journal,
- a background in the relevant methods,
- and finally, strict compliance with the MSCA mobility rule that the researcher must not have resided or carried out his/her main activity (work, studies, etc.) in the host organisation's country for more than twelve months in the three years immediately prior to the call dead-line.

**Instructions on how to apply**

Applications shall be written in English and all documents shall be in pdf format.

**Additional texts to include in the PDF are**:
onboard.
iv) Evidence of English proficiency (minimum CEFR B2-2 also checked at interview).
v) A draft Individual Career Development Plan (ICDP).
vi) Two reference letters.
viii) Ethical questionnaire (HE ethics checklist + research ethics commitment)

**Context**
This 3-year research fellowship is part of the EU Marie Skłodowska-Curie (MSCA) COFUND research project AMBER, Advanced Multiscale Biological imaging using European Research infrastructures. This project will address scientific and sectoral gaps in biological imaging ranging from molecular, through cellular, tissue, organ and organism levels of organisation, and is coordinated by the LINXS Institute of advanced Neutron and X-ray Science.

**Description of the ILL’s Project**
At the Institut Laue-Langevin (ILL), the world’s most powerful steady state neutron source, advanced beamlines for neutron crystallography are available (LADI and DALI), along with dedicated laboratories for the production of fully deuterated proteins (D-Lab).
Your work at the ILL will focus on using single-crystal neutron diffraction techniques in combination with other structural biology techniques, in order to visualize important hydrogen atoms in carbohydrate-binding proteins and their complexes.

**Name and working place of the Principal investigator**
Matthew Blakeley, Large-Scale Structures group, Institut Laue-Langevin, Grenoble, France, is responsible for the neutron macromolecular crystallography beamlines LADI and DALI. His research uses single-crystal neutron diffraction in combination with other structural biology techniques for studies of biological macromolecular structure and function, typically health/disease related and with a particular focus on structure-based drug design.

**Minimum requirements**
- PhD in structural biology/chemistry, with excellent knowledge of biochemistry and molecular biology, including experience in protein expression, purification and crystal growth.
- Applicants need to have a maximum 8 years after a doctoral degree (PhD), as required by the Commission, in accordance with the MSCA rules.
- At least one original publication in a peer-reviewed journal.
- Strict compliance with the MSCA mobility rule that the researcher must not have resided or carried out his/her main activity (work, studies, etc.) in the host organisation's country for more than twelve months in the three years immediately prior to