• Highly motivated and interested in the fundamental mechanism of the gut microbiome, infection, cancer and translation of laboratory finding into perspective clinical applications
• Master degree in microbiology, biochemistry, molecular biology or biotechnology is preferential 
• Previous experimental experience in animal model research, basic molecular biology, microbiology and cell culture techniques are of advantage. fundamental statistical and computational skills (preferential) and an interest to broaden the use of computational methods for microbiome data analysis 
• Team-working abilities are essential 
• Critical independent thinking is encouraged
• The successful candidate will develop excellent experimental, communication and presentation skills, and will be familiarized with a high performing scientific environment that gives an advantage for career development in both academia and industry

The Lab of Translational Microbiome Research (Head: C. Stein-Thoeringer), part of the Cluster of Excellence “Controlling Microbes to Fight Infections” (CMFI), at the University of Tübingen studies the cross-talk between gut microbes, pathogens, the immune milieu and environmental factors in cancer development, therapy and infections. The lab’s science mission is to understand how individual bacteria, microbial consortia or microbial perturbations through diets or antibiotics interplay with inflammatory responses and metabolic disturbances to drive carcinogenesis and metastasis in preclinical models. We also study the longitudinal cross-talk of cancer therapies with the gut microbiota in patients and in mouse models to investigate causal relations, e.g., by direct bacterium-host cell interactions or via microbial metabolites. Thereby this PhD-project focuses on CAR-T cell therapies. We are using cutting-edge wet-lab techniques combined with bioinformatic tools to sequence and to analyse the microbiome from different sites of the gastrointestinal tract applying culture-omics and high-resolution metagenome sequencing techniques. This approach is combined with multi-omics characterisation of the host’s immune system or the metabolome, and we utilize gnotobiotic model systems to infer causality in microbe-host interactions. In translational clinical approaches, we are performing clinical studies to study patient microbiomes, associations with disease and environmental factors and carry out microbiome-based interventions for the benefit of patients.