Postdoc Position in Microbial Ecology - Community Assembly and Interactions in Digester Microbiomes

EPFL, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, is one of the most dynamic university campuses in Europe and ranks among the top 20 universities worldwide. The EPFL employs more than 6,500 people supporting the three main missions of the institutions: education, research and innovation. The EPFL campus offers an exceptional working environment at the heart of a community of more than 18,500 people, including over 14,000 students and 4,000 researchers from more than 120 different countries.

Postdoc Position in Microbial Ecology - Community Assembly and Interactions in Digester Microbiomes

Mission

The Microbial Physiology and Resource Biorecovery Laboratory (MICROBE), led by Dr. Wenyu Gu at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL), invites applications for a fully funded Postdoctoral Researcher position in Microbial Ecology.

We are seeking a highly motivated and talented postdoctoral researcher to join our team at the Institute of Environmental Engineering. The successful candidate will conduct cutting-edge research in applied and environmental microbiology, with a particular focus on microbial community assembly and interaction principles using anaerobic digestion communities as a model system.

Main duties and responsibilities

Anaerobic digestion communities are among the best-characterized and most ecologically important microbial ecosystems. Composed of diverse bacteria and archaea that cooperate through metabolic interactions, these communities drive the degradation of organic matter in oxygen-free environments and ultimately produce methane. They play a central role in global carbon cycling and provide an excellent model for investigating fundamental questions in microbial ecology, including community assembly, species interactions, resilience, and ecosystem functioning.

Using enrichment cultures combined with metabolite profiling and multi-omics analyses, our group has recently revealed that: (1) environmental selection imposed by pH and substrate availability constrains metabolic network architecture despite substantial taxonomic turnover in anaerobic digestion communities, providing a mechanistic explanation for convergent ecosystem functions across similar environments; and (2) amino acid fermentation requires the balancing of oxidative and reductive half-reactions, with Stickland metabolism partitioned among community members rather than encoded and expressed within individual genomes. These findings demonstrate that redox balancing during amino acid fermentation is an emergent property of the microbial community, maintained through metabolite cross-feeding. (Both studies are currently under review.)

Building on these findings, the successful candidate will investigate how microbial interactions shape ecosystem functions and how interaction principles scale in complex communities. The project combines experimental and computational approaches, including high-throughput sequencing, bioinformatics, microbial isolation and cultivation, physiological characterization, and community-level activity and function analyses.

This position is funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) and EPFL. The postdoctoral researcher will collaborate closely with PhD candidates and fellow postdoctoral researchers within the laboratory and across EPFL’s international research network.

Profile

• PhD degree in environmental engineering, microbiology, chemical engineering, or a related discipline.
• Strong publication record and demonstrated research accomplishments, including peer-reviewed publications and conference presentations.
• Experience in bioinformatics and modeling is valuable.
• Strong communication and scientific writing skills in English.
• Ability to work effectively in a collaborative and international research environment.

We offer

• Mentoring and support for professional and career development.
• A stimulating, multicultural research environment with access to state-of-the-art facilities.
• Opportunities for interdisciplinary collaboration and international networking.
• A world-class research and training environment within the ETH Domain.

Informations

• Start date: Flexible.
• Contract duration: One-year contract, renewable annually for up to three years.

To apply, please follow the instructions provided in the application portal linked below.

Please prepare the following application materials:

• Motivation letter.
• Detailed curriculum vitae (CV).
• Contact information.
• Names and contact details of three references who are willing to provide recommendation letters.

Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis, and the position will remain open until a suitable candidate has been identified and the position has been filled.