UiT The Arctic University of Norway

The Faculty of Health Sciences at UiT The Arctic University of Norway represents a newly created entity gathering almost all possible health study programs. This facilitates an unique interdisciplinarity and innovation in health education and research. We work closely with the services in the North to solve tomorrow's challenges.

Read more about us at uit.no/helsefak

Faculty of Health Sciences / Department of Community Medicine

The position

At the Department of Community Medicine a position is available for a Postdoctoral research fellow. The position is affiliated with the research group Systems Epidemiology.

The position is a fixed term position for a duration of 3 years. Appointment to the position of Postdoctoral Research Fellow is mainly intended to provide qualification for work in top academic positions. It is a prerequisite that the applicant is able to carry out the project over the full course of the employment period. No person may hold more than one fixed-term position as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the same institution. The Research group will be part of the EU funded REMEDIA project. The postdoctoral fellow will be working in close collaboration with the other partners in REMEDIA. It is a prerequisite that the applicant is able to carry out the project over the full course of the employment period.

The appointed Postdoctoral Fellow must have its daily workplace at UiT - The Arctic University of Norway, Tromsø.

The candidate must be able to start in the position within a reasonable time.

The project field of research

REMEDIA is one of nine European Human Exposome research projects that started 1st of January 2020. The project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Program under grant agreement No 874753. The human exposome research comprises studies of how the total exposure from diet, lifestyle and the environment affects health over the lifecourse.

The overall objective of the REMEDIA project is to determine how and to what extent the exposome affects the severity and morbidity of Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) and Cystic Fibrosis (CF) throughout the disease, thus providing key elements to design more tailored prevention and care programs. More specifically this project concerns WP 2 in the REMDIA project, where the postdoctoral candidate will be responsible for assessing changes in DNA methylation and lipid profiles in blood prior to development of COPD in a nested case control design using samples from the Norwegian Women and Cancer Study (NOWAC) and the Tromsø Study.

The NOWAC and the Tromsø study are both cohorts managed at the Department of community medicine at UiT, and more information about the cohorts can be found here; www.uit.no/research/nowac and www.uit.no/research/tromsostudy.

Contact

For further information about the position, please contact:

Associate professor Tonje Braaten

• Phone: +4777644820
• E-mail: tonje.braaten@uit.no

or professor Torkjel M Sandanger

• Phone: +4777645404
• E-mail: torkjel.sandanger@uit.no

Qualifications

For appointment as Post-doctoral research fellow, the applicant requires a Norwegian doctoral degree in a relevant field for the project or a corresponding foreign doctoral degree recognized as equivalent to a Norwegian doctoral degree.

Candidates who have submitted their PhD thesis for doctoral degree evaluation may also be considered. Additional relevant research experience is an advantage, but not mandatory.

The candidate should have practical experience with computing and programming, preferably in data analysis environments such as R. Familiarity with interdisciplinary work, epidemiology, and/or -bioinformatics is beneficial, and experience analyzing different omics data in human studies is considered an advantage.

The candidate should be proficient in spoken and written English. Skills in writing scientific publications in English is essential. Fluency in Norwegian or other Scandinavian language is desirable.

Personal skills will be emphasized. We are seeking a highly motivated and responsible candidate who should be able to work independently and interactively in a team setting. The candidate should have excellent analytical skills, great work capacity, and enthusiasm for research.

At UiT we put emphasis on the quality, relevance and significance of the research work and not on where the work is published, in accordance with the principles of The San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA).

Inclusion and diversity

UiT The Arctic University i Norway is working actively to promote equality, gender balance and diversity among employees and students, and to create an inclusive and safe working environment. We believe that inclusion and diversity is a strength, and we want employees with different competencies, professional experience, life experience and perspectives.

If you have a disability, a gap in your CV or immigrant background, we encourage you to tick the box for this in your application. If there are qualified applicants, we invite least one in each group for an interview. If you get the job, we will adapt the working conditions if you need it. Apart from selecting the right candidates, we will only use the information for anonymous statistics.

We offer

• Exciting work tasks in an interdisciplinary research field
• Involvement in an interesting research project
• Excellent career opportunities
• A good academic environment with dedicated colleagues
• Flexible working hours and a state collective pay agreement
• Good arrangements for pension, insurance and loans in the Norwegian Public Service Pension Fund

Application

Your application must include:

• Cover letter explaining your motivation to apply for the position, research interests, and relevant education
• The PhD thesis
• CV
• Diplomas and transcripts (all degrees)
• Contact information 3 references, including the PhD supervisor
• A list of your academic production
• Description of your academic production, stating which works you consider most important
• The academic works (published or not) you wish us to take into consideration in the assessment

In order to achieve a targeted use of the postdoctoral position, and to strengthen the employee’s career development, a development plan must be available no later than three months after the appointment contract is signed. The development plan must be approved by the immediate leader with personnel responsibility.

The documentation must be in English or a Scandinavian language. We only accept applications sent via www.jobbnorge.no.

General information

The appointment is made in accordance with State regulations and guidelines at UiT. At our website, you will find more information for applicants.

The remuneration for Postdoctoral research fellow is in accordance with the State salary scale code 1352. A compulsory contribution of 2 % to the Norwegian Public Service Pension Fund will be deducted.

The successful candidate must be willing to get involved in the ongoing development of their department and the university as a whole. UiT wishes to increase the proportion of females in academic positions. In cases where two or more applicants are found to be approximately equally qualified, female applicants will be given priority.

According to the Norwegian Freedom and Information Act (Offentleglova) information about the applicant may be included in the public applicant list, also in cases where the applicant has requested non-disclosure.

In case of discrepancies between the Norwegian and the English version of this description, the Norwegian version takes precedence.

More practical information for working and living in Norway can be found here: International staff

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