Doctoral Position in Natural Science, Specializing in Biology

Doctoral Position in Natural Science, specializing in Biology

Data-driven evolution and biological diversity encompasses research that leverages the massive data sets generated by techniques such as high-throughput sequencing of genomes and biomass, continuous recording of video and sound in natural environments, high-throughput imaging of biological samples, and large-scale remote monitoring of organisms or habitats.

In this doctoral program, you will explore how organisms' traits and genomes evolve under Darwinian selection. You will develop new mathematical and computational methods to understand adaptation in complex environments, where different selection pressures place conflicting demands on cell biology and lead to complex trade-offs. For example, better performance at high temperatures often comes at the cost of poorer performance at low temperatures, and bacterial resistance to antibiotics is often linked to slower growth in the absence of antibiotics.

From this perspective, Darwinian selection can be viewed as a multi-objective optimization problem, where selection seeks to balance the costs and benefits of different traits to optimally position organisms in a high-dimensional trait space. You will investigate whether multi-objective optimization algorithms (MOO), often used in engineering, can help us understand how organisms adapt and evolve.

You will analyze large multivariate datasets of genome sequences and organism fitness, using MOO techniques, machine learning, and genome-wide association studies. Yeast and bacteria are your main model organisms, but the analytical framework you develop will be broadly applicable.

General information about being a doctoral student at the University of Gothenburg is available on the university's doctoral student pages:

University-wide information about what it means to be a doctoral student at the University of Gothenburg can be found on the university's doctoral student pages.