Postdoctoral Scholar - Bat Infectious Diseases - Department of Integrative Biology

The UC Berkeley Department of Integrative Biology studies biological phenomena at various levels of organization, ranging from molecules to organisms, populations, and ecosystems. As integrative biologists, we aspire to approach biological problems in a way that incorporates information across various levels of organismal organization. Much of our work is unified by evolutionary principles, in that all organisms share a history of descent with modification, inferred through their characteristics and mediated by natural selection.

This position solicits applications for a Postdoctoral Scholar in the Brook lab within Integrative Biology.

The Postdoctoral Scholar will work on themes central to the Brook lab research program, specifically transmission of potentially zoonotic infections among wild fruit bats in a Madagascar ecosystem.

The focus of the position will be primarily analysis of existing data and writing, with a goal of completing a minimum of two peer-reviewed publications over the 2-year time horizon.

The Scholar may engage in lab work and field work (the latter conducted at the Madagascar research site) to fill gaps in the scientific storyline from pre-existing data as needed. International field work is an optional opportunity that may arise during the course of employment but is not a requirement for this position. The specific datasets to be analyzed will depend on the interests and skillsets of the selected Scholar but could include: analysis of long term GPS telemetry data from two species of wild fruit bat to inform population viability analysis and/or meta population models of pathogen transmission or analysis of microbial transcriptomics and metabolomics data to understand seasonal impacts on the bat microbiome and downstream consequences for viral infection status.