These are short-term appointments for 3-12 months depending on a project. The topics can be either proposed by the applicant or are proposed by the partners or associated partners of the network as indicated below.
For Short-Term Fellowships, the eligibility rules of the European Commission for ESR (Early Stage Researchers) apply:
"Early Stage researchers are defined as those who are, at the time of selection by the host institution, in the first four years of their research careers. This is measured from date when they obtained the degree which would formally entitle them to embark on a doctorate, either in the country in which the research training is provided..."
Also keep in mind the European Commission's conditions of nationality and mobility of researchers, please:
"Researchers can be nationals of any country other than the country of the promises of the host organisation where they will carry out their projects. Additionally researchers must not have resided or carried out their main activity in the country of the host for more than 12 months in the 3 years immediately prior to their recruitment..."
Investigation of the influence of chemical speciation on the accuracy of QSPR/QSAR models.
The biological activity and fate properties of chemicals can drastically change (in order of many orders of magnitude) depending on whether ionic or neutral forms of molecules are present in the environment. The difficulties with this task are frequently connected to low accuracy of existing methods to predict dissociation constants of molecules. The pKa model (which is under development within the GO-Bio grant) or otherwise calculated dissociation constants and/or experimental dissociation constants of molecules will be used to address this question and explore whether use of chemical speciation can increase accuracy of QSPR/QSAR models.
For these positions strong programming skills in Java or/and C++ are expected. The students should be able to implement & develop new chemoinformatics algorithms (calculation of descriptors, machine learning algorithms, etc.). Background in chemistry or bioinformatics, informatics, computer sciences is required.
For more details contact Dr. I.V. Tetko
Reproducibility of linear QSAR models in the JRC database
The JRC database contains a growing number of descriptions of validated QSAR/QSPR models http://qsardb.jrc.it/qmrf, which can be used for REACH. The goal of this project is to re-implement linear models available in JRC database in order to verify whether they can be reproduced and whether there are any difficulties (if any) with it. The models will be made publicly available at http://ochem.eu.
Requirements to the candidate:
She/he should have knowledge in chemistry and use of some chemoinformatics software (e.g., know about different molecular format, such as SMILES, SDF, know how to interconvert chemical structures, etc.)
She/he should have also some knowledge in Perl, Python in order to be able to work with data processing.
Duration of fellowship 3-6 months
For more details contact Dr. I.V. Tetko
Reproducibility of non-linear QSAR models in the JRC database
The JRC database contains a growing number of descriptions of validated QSAR/QSPR models http://qsardb.jrc.it/qmrf, which can be used for REACH. The goal of this project is to re-implement non-linear models available in JRC database in order to verify whether they can be reproduced and whether there are any difficulties (if any) with it. The models will be made publicly available at http://ochem.eu.
Requirements to the candidate:
She/he should have knowledge in chemistry and use of some chemoinformatics software (e.g., know about different molecular format, such as SMILES, SDF, know how to interconvert chemical structures, etc.)
She/he should have also some knowledge in Perl, Python in order to be able to work with data processing.
Duration of fellowship 3-6 months
For more details contact Dr. I.V. Tetko
In addition to clearly defined projects, there is the possibility of projects at free choice in each working group.
3 to 12 months
In this case you are asked to provide a short abstract about the topic of your PhD thesis and the sub-project you propose for ECO. Please, show the connection of the proposed project to the approaches and aims of REACH and its importance for future environment. Your motivation letter should also include the expected results, your expectations to the ECO training programme as well as your future career plans.
For more details contact
Dr. I.V. Tetko, Prof. K.-W. Schramm, Prof. W. Peijnenburg, Prof. T. Öberg, Dr. J.M. Navas, Prof. A.J. Hendriks, Prof. R. Todeschini or Prof. T. Knepper