项目介绍

2024年11月8日

Function

Are you a computational scientist who wants to study how plant tissues respond to mechanical forces? Then this PhD position may be for you!

What will you do?
This PhD project will focus on the mathematical modelling of stress patterns in plant tissues using a multi-scale approach, from micromechanical models of single cell walls, to multi-cell mechanical models and continuum approaches.
You will develop such models, to study the evolution of mechanical stress during tissue growth and its consequences for biological processes, such as seed germination or pathogen invasion.
You will work closely together with experimentalists working on the same systems, and with other PhD students who develop complementary modelling approaches. Working together also means being able to talk about your expertise with people from another scientific background.

This PhD project is part of the Gravitation programme GreenTE (Green Tissue Engineering, Home – GreenTE (green-te.nl)), a multidisciplinary consortium of 7 Dutch universities. Together, GreenTE will unravel how plants sense and respond to mechanical stimuli. These fundamental insights will be the basis to develop engineering interventions to improve plant regeneration, seed germination and defenses against disease. As our new PhD student, you 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.

You will work here
The research is embedded in the Laboratory of Physical Chemistry and Soft Matter and will be supervised by prof. Jasper van der Gucht, and co-supervised by Dr. Uddalok Sen.

Function Requirements

You have:

• an Msc degree in computational (bio)physics, theoretical biology, applied mathematics, theoretical soft matter science or related discipline;
• a keen interest in collaborating with plant cell biologists;
• affinity and or experience with interdisciplinary research;
• experience with numerical modelling, such as finite elements or particle-based simulations;
• experience with programming;
• ability to work independently in a multidisciplinary environment;
• willingness to teach MSc and BSc students.

For this position your command of the English language is expected to be at C1 level. Sometimes it is necessary to submit an internationally recognised Certificate of Proficiency in the English Language. More information can be found here.

Contactinformation

For more information about this position, please contact prof. Jasper van der Gucht, by email: jasper.vandergucht@wur.nl.

For more information about the procedure, please contact Rutger Voorrips, corporate recruiter, by email: rutger.voorrips@wur.nl.