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PhD Research Fellowship in Botany 2019, University of Oslo, Norway

Publish Date: Jun 17, 2019

Deadline: Aug 20, 2019

PhD Research Fellowship in Botany

Job description

A four-year full time PhD Research Fellowship in Botany (position code 1017) including 25 % of compulsory work is available at the Natural History Museum (NHM), University of Oslo (UiO).

More about the position

The position is available from October 1st 2019.

The announced position is part of the UiO:Life Science convergence environment REA:Life. Convergence environments are interdisciplinary research groups that will aim to solve grand challenges related to health and environment. They are funded by UiO's interdisciplinary strategic area UiO:Life Science.

REA:life (Rediscovery of medicinal plant usage in the “Age of Exploration”: From cultural historical heritage to innovative pharmaceuticals) is an interdisciplinary natural and cultural sciences project across six departments with twelve participants. The project is recruiting four PhD students who will work together in a team with interdisciplinary supervision and activities. The project aims to retrieve lost medicinal knowledge through tracing the prevalence of disease and the history of societies’ increasing awareness of epidemiological diseases during the Age of Exploration (15th – 18th century).

We aim to identify novel bioactive compounds in historical medicinal plants using cutting edge methods in pharmacology, immunology, and metagenomics.

The candidate will work on identifying plant species and populations that were commonly used in herbal medicine in sites with a particular concentration of disease. The candidate will address this question from different angles using several different methods. The work involves a survey of historical as well as modern literature in collaboration with one of the other PhD students in the project, work on archaeobotanical collections and historical herbaria, floristic field studies on quarantine islands and in (former) monastery and hospital gardens and (ancient) DNA analyses. The candidate will also collect a number of individual medicinal plant populations to be grown in the Oslo Botanical Garden that can be used in further studies.

The candidate will work in the research group of associate professor Anneleen Kool at the Plant Evolution and DNA Metabarcoding group (PET), Natural History Museum, University of Oslo. The PET group addresses cutting-edge research questions in plant speciation, phylogenomics, and biogeography using genomic and DNA metabarcoding data from modern and ancient samples, and contributes to the development of metabarcoding as a next-generation biodiversity assessment tool for society. The Kool group within the PET group combines ethnobotany with studies on historical human influence on plant distribution using comparative phylogenetic methods. The candidate will be co-supervised by associate professor Sanne Boessenkool at the Centre for Ecological and Evolutionary Synthesis, University of Oslo and associate professor Karoline Kjesrud at the Museum of Cultural History, University of Oslo and the candidate will spend some time in their respective research groups.

Grade requirements for admission to the PhD program

  • The average grade point for courses included in the Bachelor’s degree must correspond to C or better in the Norwegian educational system
  • The average grade point for courses included in the Master’s degree must correspond to B or better in the Norwegian educational system
  • The Master’s thesis must correspond to grade B or better in the Norwegian educational system

The purpose of the fellowship is research training leading to the successful completion of a PhD degree. The fellowship requires admission to the PhD program at the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences. Appointment to a PhD research fellowship is conditional upon admission to the Faculty’s research training program. A plan for the research training must be submitted no later than two months after taking up the position, and the admission approved within three months. 

For more information click "LINK TO ORIGINAL" below.


This opportunity has expired. It was originally published here:

https://www.jobbnorge.no/en/available-jobs/job/171585/phd-research-fellowship-in-botany

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Disciplines

Natural Sciences

Study Levels

PhD

Research

Opportunity Types

Fellowships

Eligible Countries

International

Host Countries

Norway