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As Austria's largest research and technology organisation for applied research, we are dedicated to make substantial contributions to solving the major challenges of our time, climate change and digitalisation. To achieve our goals, we rely on our specific research, development and technology competencies, which are the basis of our commitment to excellence in all areas. With our open culture of innovation and our motivated, international teams, we are working to position AIT as Austria's leading research institution at the highest international level and to make a positive contribution to the economy and society.

Our Center for Health & Bioresources is looking for new Ingenious Partner for our location in Vienna. In the Center for Health & Bioresources, we aim to solve challenges associated with demographic change, resource scarcity and environmental pollution and to develop innovative solutions, that enable early disease detection and support healthy and active aging.

Our Competence Unit Molecular Diagnostics ocuses its research on the development of novel diagnostic technologies for a wide range of applications (e.g., infectious diseases, cancer diagnostics, health monitoring).

The PhD project is part of the European research project REACTION involving 14 institutions from Europe and is coordinated by Dr. Ivan Barišić.The goal of the Horizon Europe project is to develop novelin silicoandin vitrotechnologies for food defence. The PhD candidate will develop novel, aptamer-based technologies to improve the detection of food-associated health threats.

PhD Thesis “Aptamer-Based Diagnostics”

Your responsibilities as a PhD student:

• You dive deeper into the topic of  synthetic biology and DNA-based diagnostics .
• You  carry out a literature search  and keep track of the actual literature  about aptamers and alternative biorecognition molecules .
• You  perform sequencing experiments  to analyse clinical and food samples.
• You use and become familiar with  analytical instruments and molecular tools .
• By interacting with other international scientists and project consortia working on  food defence, diagnostics, and synthetic biology  you will also be  building up your professional network .
• You will be  introduced to the European community  working on food safety, food security and food defence.
• You will gain experience in  an international, interdisciplinary research  group, while working with molecular biologists, chemists, computer scientists, physicists, and dissemination and exploitation experts.
• You will  publish your research results  in international journals and will present them at conferences.
• You will learn how to  evaluate  the  results  and  prepare them for further studie
• You will accumulate experience in a research field, that has an  enormous potential to transform the food industry .

Your qualifications as an Ingenious Partner:

• Master's studies in the field of molecular biology, microbiology, chemistry / biochemistry, biotechnology or similar
• Good knowledge in Microbiology and Genetics, ideally regarding aptamers and diagnostics
• Enthusiastic about the conception of scientific studies, writing of proposals and publishing papers
• High level of commitment and team spirit
• Very good knowledge of English in word and writing
• Interested in reading and writing scientific publications and enjoy application-oriented questions from industry

Details:

• Duration of the PhD project:  3 years 
• Start date:  1.9.2025 – However, there is some flexibility concerning the start-date
• The candidate will be  enrolled at TU Wien

What to expect:

EUR 2.786,10 gross per month (14 times / year), for 30 h / week. In addition to numerous events, seminars, networking opportunities and additional company benefits, you will be part of our AIT PhD Community with around 150 international students. As a research institution, we are familiar with the supervision and execution of PhD theses, and we are looking forward to supporting you accordingly!

At AIT diversity and inclusion are of great importance. This is why we strive to inspire women to join our teams in the field of technology. We welcome applications from women, who will be given preference in case of equal qualifications after taking into account all relevant facts and circumstances of all applications. 

Please submit your complete application documents including your CV, cover letter and relevantcertificates (transcript of records) online.