PhD Position in Neuroimmunology

The Department of Biomedicine (DBM) integrates basic and clinical researchers from University of Basel and University Hospitals committed to deepen the understanding of health and disease while driving the development of innovative therapies that address unmet medical needs. With over 70 research groups and 800 employees, the Department of Biomedicine is the largest department within the University of Basel. Be part of our future!

The Clinical Neuroimmunology Laboratory in the Department of Biomedicine, headed by Professor Tobias Derfuss, is planning to open a PhD position in Spring of 2026. Research in the lab is aimed at understanding the causes and pathomechanisms of autoimmune diseases affecting the nervous system, particularly multiple sclerosis and myasthenia gravis.

The goal of the project is to understand the cause of multiple sclerosis, focusing on the interactions between autoreactive B cells, the lymphotropic virus EBV, and the cellular anatomy of the central nervous system. Work will involve both patient samples and experiments with live animals. Experimental methods include molecular and cell biology, flow cytometry, histology and microscopy, protein methods, and bioinformatics.

We are looking for people who enjoy working in the lab, and with whom other people also enjoy working together. Basic research requires thought, patience, attention to detail, the commitment of large amounts of time and energy, and the ability to tolerate frustration. You need to be able to work independently, and also to work in a highly integrated way as part of a team, sometimes under circumstances that may seem like they benefit the team while the immediate benefit to you may not be clear.

Interested applicants should contact the project leader Nicholas Sanderson by email at nicholas.sanderson
, using as a subject exactly the text "neuroimmunology PhD 2026". Please include two things: a CV as a separate file, not larger than 1 MB, and, as text included in the main body of the email, a five- to ten-sentence discussion of a publication from our group which you consider interesting. The text should specify the main question and main answer of the work, and identify, if possible, strengths and weaknesses.

If you seek help from a computer in developing the content of the text, please add one sentence explaining why.