Website Green TE - Leiden University
3 PhD Funded Positions and 2 Postdoc Positions in Plant Biology/Mechanobiology Within the GreenTE Gravitation Program in The Netherlands: Plant Mechanobiology is an field that explores how mechanical forces and physical properties influence the growth, development, and behavior of plants. At its heart, plant mechanobiology investigates how plants perceive, respond, and adapt to mechanical stimuli, which can include forces like wind, gravity, touch, or even the pressure exerted by their own growth. This field bridges physics, biology, and engineering to understand these interactions.
Mechanobiology plays a crucial role in plant morphogenesis. The mechanical properties of cell walls, influenced by the arrangement of cellulose microfibrils, determine how cells expand and divide, shaping plant organs. This includes how plants bend or how leaves fold, as seen in the rapid movements of the Mimosa pudica when touched, which involves specialized motor organs called pulvini. Understanding plant mechanobiology can lead to advancements in agriculture, like developing crops that are more resilient to wind or mechanical stress, or optimizing plant architecture for better light capture and yield.
Plant mechanobiology, therefore, not only enriches our understanding of plant life but also opens avenues for innovation in biotechnology, agriculture, and even materials science, where plant-inspired designs could lead to new technologies. This field continues to evolve, with each discovery peeling back another layer of the complex life of plants, revealing them as dynamic, responsive organisms far beyond passive greenery.
About GreenTE: Green Mechanobiology is positioned at the interface of classical disciplines: biology, mechanics, physics and chemistry. A central aim in mechanobiology is not to view the physical and mechanical aspects of plant life as separate from the complex biological reality, but as an intrinsic and deeply intertwined part of the whole. The field of Green Mechanobiology aims to integrate concepts from physics and mechanics into a biological viewpoint on the processes of life for a systems level understanding.
A foundational basis of our GreenTE project is our shared conviction that to understand how mechanics couples to biological programs in the life of plant cells and tissues, and to learn how such knowledge can be leveraged to gain engineering control over plant development or resilience, we need to bring together a broad range of expertise. We not only believe that an inherently multidisciplinary problem requires a truly interdisciplinary team, but are also convinced that it is essential to train a new generation of young researchers to integrate concepts from these disparate fields in their intuitive scientific thinking, which can only be effectively achieved by embedding their training in a collaborative community that transcends traditional disciplinary boundaries. Thus, the GreenTE consortium strives to advance the field of plant mechanobiology both by pushing the frontiers of our scientific knowledge and by fostering a new generation of researchers that is equipped to better approach complex problems using a multidisciplinary approach.
The GreenTE community will build strong links to adjacent international fields of plant biomechanics and (animal and microbial) mechanobiology. We will link our efforts to those of other international initiatives, in part through our Scientific Advisory Board members, by organizing international conferences, by enabling exchange in the form of scientific visits by GreenTE researchers to other institutes (such as the NSF Center for Engineering MechanoBiology (CEMB)) and by offering support to international scientists to visit and work in GreenTE labs. We will provide a rich playing field for translational science through the inclusion of an Industrial Stakeholders Committee, comprising both small to medium and large enterprises, that will support and help identify novel applications of our fundamental research.
We have 3 PhD Positions and 2 Postdoctoral Positions available: 1 PhD and 1 Postdoc position at Leiden University; 2 PhD and 1 Postdoc position at Wageningen University Research.
Leiden University:
PhD position: Modeling the mechanical regulation of plant development and regeneration:
The opening is for a PhD research position within the field of mathematical or theoretical biology, computational physics, applied mathematics or computational science. The successful applicant will be an integral member of the GreenTE community, which offers an open, diverse and inspiring environment to engage in multidisciplinary mechanobiology research at the intersection of biology, chemistry and physics, and is expected to participate in GreenTE events, training and collaborations.
Key responsibilities:
- Develop and interpret novel two-dimensional multiscale mathematical models of mechanical regulation of plant development and regeneration in close collaboration with members of the GreenTE consortium, in particular the group of experimental plant biologist Prof. dr. Dolf Weijers at Wageningen University.
- Further develop the plant modeling package VirtualLeaf to reflect mechanical manipulation as performed in the experimental lab.
- Incorporate detailed insights into the model of the mechanical properties of cell walls based on experiments and small-scale simulations developed elsewhere in the GreenTE consortium.
- Correct and improve your mathematical models in close collaboration with experimental biologists, particularly PhD students at Wageningen University who will perform mechanical interventions (e.g., stretching, squeezing or poking) of embryo development and root regeneration of the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana.
- At a later stage: extend the models to three dimensions in close collaboration with a postdoc in computational science in our team.
Enquiries about the position can be made to Prof.dr. Roeland Merks, [email protected]
To apply for this vacancy, please ensure that you join to your application the following additional documents:
- A letter of motivation
- An updated CV
- Letters of recommendation or contact details of 1 or 2 former supervisors
- The transcripts of your MSc studies
- Examples of previously written code
Application deadline September 9th 2024.
Postdoc position: Three-dimensional simulation models of plant tissue mechanobiology
The opening is for a Postdoc research position within the field of computational science, mathematical or theoretical biology, computational physics, or applied mathematics. The successful applicant will be an integral member of the GreenTE community, which offers an open, diverse and inspiring environment to engage in multidisciplinary mechanobiology research at the intersection of biology, chemistry and physics, and is expected to participate in GreenTE events, training and collaborations.
Key responsibilities:
- Develop novel, three-dimensional simulation techniques suitable for modeling the mechanical regulation of plant development and regeneration in close collaboration with members of the GreenTE consortium.
- Integrate the new techniques into the plant modeling package VirtualLeaf .
- Design simulation experiments to reflect and interpret mechanical manipulation of the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana as performed elsewhere in the GreenTE consortium.
- Incorporate detailed insights into the model of the mechanical properties of cell walls based on experiments and simulations at the subcellular level as developed elsewhere in the GreenTE consortium.
- Collaborate with a PhD student working in our group, also within GreenTE, to extend two-dimensional models of mechanical regulation of plant development to three dimensions and to validate these against experimental data produced elsewhere in the consortium.
- Publication of the results in the scientific literature.
Enquiries about the position can be made to Prof.dr. Roeland Merks, [email protected]
To apply for this vacancy, please ensure that you join to your application the following additional documents:
- A letter of motivation
- An updated CV
- Letters of recommendation or contact details of 1 or 2 former supervisors
- The transcripts of your MSc studies
- Examples of previously written code
Application deadline September 9th 2024.
To apply for this job please visit green-te.nl.