Researcher (PhD student) in freshwater molecular ecology

Are you looking for a PhD position? Are you interested in how increasing organic loading (browning) changes freshwater communities? Are you ready to look beneath the lake water surface and go deep into metagenomics and metatranscriptomics?

Job description

We are looking for a joint (50/50%) doctoral researcher for the Finnish Environment Institute (Syke) and the University of Helsinki (HY) for a fixed-term research position from May 1, 2026, to August 31, 2029.

The doctoral researcher's task focuses specifically on investigating the effects of browning on changes in pelagic food webs of lakes. The focus is on studying the effects of browning on the community structure and function of bacterial, protozoan and phytoplankton communities using RNA and DNA-based methods (metagenomics, metatranscriptomics).

The task includes field and laboratory work, bioinformatics and data processing, as well as reporting the results in scientific publications and in the doctoral thesis. In addition, the doctoral researcher will have the opportunity to communicate about the project and its results nationally and internationally.

The doctoral thesis is part of the consortium project "The Effects of Browning on Lake Dynamics: Who Wins and Who Loses? (Dark LaDy)" funded by the Research Council of Finland. In addition to Finnish Environment Institute, the consortium partners are the University of Helsinki and the University of Jyväskylä. The doctoral thesis position is divided equally between Syke and the University of Helsinki.

The task will be positioned to Syke's Freshwater ecology group in Nature solutions unit in Helsinki and to the Ecosystems and Environment research program of the Faculty of Biological and Environmental Sciences of the University of Helsinki, both on the Viikki campus area in Helsinki.

Our expectations of the applicant

Successful performance of the task requires a master's degree in a natural science field, with a major in microbial ecology, ecology, li