Postdoctoral Fellow

Short summary

Pontus Skoglund's Ancient Genomics Lab at the Francis Crick Institute in London is looking for a postdoctoral fellow interested in ancient human population genomics, to focus on reconstructing genetic history and/or natural selection with whole-genomes sequenced in the lab. The Skoglund Ancient Genomics lab (www.skoglundlab.org) is a team with backgrounds in computational biology, molecular biology and archaeology, with state-of-the-art computational infrastructure and bioinformatic support. The lab sequences ancient DNA from thousands of samples every year. The Francis Crick Institute (www.crick.ac.uk) is the largest biomedical institute under one roof in Europe.

Key Responsibilities

Recently, we have developed a new method, dubbed Twigstats, that can boost high-resolution ancestry modelling e.g. using the qpAdm framework by 10-fold or more (Speidel et al. 2024, bioRxiv). This postdoc offers an opportunity to analyse human genomes generated in the lab and from the literature to reconstruct high-resolution genetic history in Europe and elsewhere.

New whole-genome data also offers opportunities to study natural selection and functional genomics in greater detail. For example, we have revealed evidence for natural selection on immunity in Neolithic Europe, where late farming groups had an excess of ancestry from previous hunter-gatherers at the major MHC immunity locus (Davy et al. 2023 Current Biology). This postdoc offers an opportunity to work with high-resolution genomes generated in the lab and from the literature to study single-locus selective sweeps, polygenic natural selection, and evolution of copy number variants.

Postdoctoral Fellows will lead their own projects, contribute to other projects on a collaborative basis (both in the lab and with external collaborators) and may guide PhD students in their research. The ability to work in a team is essential.

About us

The Francis Crick Institute is a biomedical discovery institute dedicated to understanding the fundamental biology underlying health and disease. Its work is helping to understand why disease develops and to translate discoveries into new ways to prevent, diagnose and treat illnesses such as cancer, heart disease, stroke, infections, and neurodegenerative diseases.

An independent organisation, its founding partners are the Medical Research Council (MRC), Cancer Research UK, Wellcome, UCL (University College London), Imperial College London and King’s College London.

The Crick was formed in 2015, and in 2016 it moved into a new state-of-the-art building in central London which brings together 1500 scientists and support staff working collaboratively across disciplines, making it the biggest biomedical research facility under in one building in Europe.

The Francis Crick Institute will be world-class with a strong national role. Its distinctive vision for excellence includes commitments to collaboration; developing emerging talent and exporting it the rest of the UK; public engagement; and helping turn discoveries into treatments as quickly as possible to improve lives and strengthen the economy.

• If you are interested in applying for this role, please apply via our website.
• The closing date for applications is 22^nd September 2024
• All offers of employment are subject to successful security screening and continuous eligibility to work in the United Kingdom.

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