PhD Fellowships for PTNMR PhD Program

Oeiras, 3.01.2018

The call for applications to the 2018 edition of the PhD Program in Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Applied to Chemistry, Materials and Biosciences is open until January 15th. ITQB NOVA is one of the scientific partners. Ten FCT-funded fellowships are available to highly motivated candidates interested in the molecular perspective of life sciences.

One of the available research projects will be developed at ITQB NOVA's Tiago Cordeiro Lab, and the selected student will be dedicated to the supra-molecular organisation of Tir virulence factor.

"The translocated intimin receptor, Tir, is essential for EHEC and EPEC virulence. Once injected into host cells, as the first step of infection, Tir goes from the cytosol into plasma membranes to attach the pathogen to the surface and hijack host cellular processes. The dynamics and structural assembly of Tir in eukaryotic cells have a huge impact on virulence, but it remains largely unexplored, in particular from a quantitative/structural point of view. The project concerns the molecular and atomic description of Tir and its self-organisation in membranes using hybrid structural approaches (NMR/SAXS)."

This project will be developed with the co-supervision of Markus Weingarth, from Bijvoet Center, University of Utrecht, the Netherlands, where the selected student is expected to stay at least 6 months of the 4 years scholarship.

Interested candidates should visit the PhD Program website and access the online application form, where all information can be uploaded.

The PhD Program is funded by Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia and involves ITQB NOVA, FCT NOVA, Técnico, Universidade de Coimbra, Universidade de Aveiro, Universidade da Beira Interior and Universidade do Porto.