Post doc Position in Molecular Breeding
Detailed Job Description
General Expectation:
-
Determined and fully committed to an academic research career
-
Responsible, plans and conducts experiments related to the agreed (with Dr Rajan) research projects following HKU’s research integrity regulations
-
Will contribute for writing new research proposals and grant applications in the lab
-
Presents research findings at internal conferences and take part in organizing lab’s conference series such as ISOACC and workshops at HKU
-
Be proactive and enthusiastic in seeking research advice from academic friends and try to bring new research ideas through interdisciplinary collaboration to keep positive energy flowing in the lab
-
As employers use both quality and quality of research papers as one of the important indicators of research performance, post docs are expected to publish at least TWO papers per year in journals with impact factor >5 or ONE paper in prestigious journals like PNAS.
Specific research project details:
This position is sponsored by Lee Kum Kee Ltd., their knowledge exchange research grant awarded to our HKoysterLab. There will be TWO post docs to execute this “industry oriented applied research project”, one for molecular breeding and another one for oyster food chemistry” – the two post docs are expected to work together collaboratively and also with LKK staffs and local oyster growers. The project may seek academic collaboration from Prof Ziniu Yu of South China Sea Institute of Oceanology and Prof Lili of Institute of Oceanology, Qingdao and other oyster scientists.
Major objective of this project: Hong Kong oyster species is experiencing winter mass mortality in south China, including oyster farms of LKK at Zhanjiang area of China and Hong Kong. Although we do not know why this is happening in recent years, climate change trigged seasonal shift in rainfall, and thus salinity is hypothesized to be involved. We will first prove this hypothesis. The post doc, however, is primarily focused on solution to the winter mass mortality – i.e. “selective breeding” of high salinity tolerant HK strains from naturally adapted population using modern and novel molecular breeding tools such as “big data and machine learning”. We will find a PhD student (or another junior post doc or RA) and collaboration from statistics background to help with big data and machine learning part, therefore, this post doc is primarily responsible for molecular breeding part of the project only.
This post doc with knowledge and experience in using verity of molecular tools (e.g. genomics, QTL, SNP gene chips, and genotyping) for selective breeding in plants or animals, will identify “novel” molecular markers for rapid identification of strains (using novel and innovative marker assisted selection tools) to survive high salinity winter months and then correlate the data with commercial traits of interest. Therefore, experience (as indicated by published papers) in integrated “OMICS”, bioinformatics, and molecular breeding in any organism is essential for this position. Please contact Dr Rajan to discuss further about this exciting project and the position.
Salary: range from HK$ 28,000 to 38,000 per month (1 US$ = 7.8 HK$). For this salary range, the income tax is negligible in Hong Kong. Exact salary and appointment period (maximum 3 years) are negotiable.
How to apply: Please send your query or CV to Rajan via Email:rajan@hku.hk or WhatsApp: 852-95757923 or WeChat: wxid_s610q4iljvdu22 or Skype: rajanhk. Deadline: 15th December 2020 or until a suitable candidate is identified.