The Role

Post Doctoral Research Associate in plant molecular biology for 30 months (or until 30 June 2023) full time within the group of Professor Marc Knight in the Department of Biosciences. As well as being part of a vibrant research group in Durham, the successful applicant will work as part of, and collaborate with, a multidisciplinary team of 17 partners across Europe (ADAPT: Accelerated Development of multiple-stress tolerAnt PoTato), including academic institutes and companies. This consortium is focused on producing improved potato varieties suitable for the changing climate of Europe and there is opportunity to travel to obtain experience with these collaborators. The successful applicant will have expertise in plant molecular cell biology and will report directly to the project Principal Investigator, Professor Marc Knight. He/she will undertake research in the laboratory that will develop novel ways of measuring stress signalling in the crop potato. He/she will develop and use luminescent and fluorescent markers expressed in potato to measure the second messengers calcium and reactive oxygen species with state of the art imaging equipment, and will link this stress gene expression and stress resistance traits.