PREDOCTORAL RESEARCHER (PreDoc_Foodtrack)

Doctorat / PhD Profil chercheur : First Stage Researcher (R1) Type de contrat : Temporary Date limite de candidature : 19 Nov 2026 - 23:59 (Europe/Madrid) Date de début : 1 Jan 2027 Programme UE : Other EU programme Domaine : Other

JOB CHARACTERISTICS Location: ICRA – Fundació Institut Català de Recerca de l’Aigua, Girona (España) Number of positions available: 1 Expected start: January 1st, 2027 (*) Temporary Position. The position is for maximum 4 years Annual Gross Salary: minimum EPIF – maximum 29,000€ (*) This offer and contracting are subject to the obtaining of the project (Concession Resolution), the availability of economic funds and the effective start of the project. JOB DESCRIPTION ICRA is looking for a highly motivated person to join as a predoctoral researcher (R1) and develop a doctoral thesis within the framework of the FOODTRACK project (PID2025-172036NB-C21), funded by the Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities / State Research Agency (MICIU/AEI/10.13039/501100011033) and by FSE+ within the Knowledge Generation Projects 2025 and Actions for the training of predoctoral research staff 2025. FOODTRACK is an interdisciplinary and ambitious project that aims to understand how chemical and microbiological exposures from food relate to the human exposome, the gut microbiome and resistome, and to the signals observed at the population scale in urban wastewater. The project is based on the integrated analysis of three types of samples and complementary scales: – Representative food baskets, designed to characterize dietary exposures in different socioeconomic contexts. – Human biological samples from a well-characterized population cohort, especially fecal samples and other biological matrices. – Wastewater collected directly from urban collectors and wastewater treatment plants, together with sewage sludge, providing a population-scale perspective. By combining microbiology, molecular biology, metagenomics, bioinformatics, human biomonitoring, and wastewater-based epidemiology, FOODTRACK will investigate how microbial communities, antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs), mobile genetic elements (MGEs), and chemical exposures are distributed and connected along the food–human–wastewater continuum. The selected person will join the ICRA research team and develop a doctoral thesis focused mainly on the microbiome, resistome and mobilome components of FOODTRACK. The thesis will not focus on a single type of sample. The candidate will work with samples from food baskets, human samples, and wastewater and sludge samples, which will allow for direct comparison of microbial communities and determinants of antimicrobial resistance between these interconnected matrices. The research will analyze which microorganisms, determinants of antibiotic resistance, and mobile genetic elements are shared or specific to food, human, and wastewater; explore possible connections between these matrices; and assess the extent to which dietary,…