Job ID: 123030

PhD student – cellular mechanisms of psychiatry

Position: Ph.D. Student

Deadline: 15 June 2025

Employment Start Date: 1 September 2025

Contract Length: 4

City: Amsterdam

Country: Netherlands

Institution: Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience

Department: Axonal Signaling

Description:

Are you interested in contributing to an understanding of the cellular mechanisms in neuropsychiatry? Do you want to use the latest cutting-edge neuron-glia research approaches, chemical tools and optical imaging techniques in living brain tissue? Do you enjoy collaborating with researchers from different disciplines and work in a larger consortium? Then this job may be for you.

What you will be doing?
In the brain, the complement system plays an important role in neural circuit homeostasis and disease. Innate immune complement proteins secreted by microglia and neurons are key proteins to guide cell-cell interactions during synaptic pruning and recognized to have pathogenic relevance in neuropsychiatric disorders. You will be part of a team comprising of neuroscientists and immunologists, working closely with the key researchers in the field of synthetic organic chemistry (University of Leiden) and structural biology (University of Utrecht). You will use newly developed chemical probes to image and manipulate proteins and live image the complement system, while recording activity of neurons and glia cells in brain tissue. Transgenic reporter lines will allow you to employ 2P or confocal spinning-disk imaging and tracking microglial surveillance. Ultimately, you will develop a research pipeline to study neuron-glia interactions to provide a mechanistic, causal understanding of molecular- and cell biology of psychiatric symptoms.

Who are we looking for? 
You are a highly motivated, self-driven candidate with a master’s degree in neuroscience, biomedicine, or relevant chemical science discipline. The ideal candidate will have experience with electrophysiology and/or live cell imaging techniques and preferably with a strong affinity for neuroimmunology. Programming skills will be very useful for your project. You have excellent capabilities for working independently and being a team player, comfortable communicating, presenting and writing in English.

Depending on education and experience the minimum salary is € 2.901 and the maximum salary is € 3.707 gross per month for a full-time appointment (scale P cao Nederlandse Universiteiten/KNAW). This is exclusive of 8% vacation allowance, 8.3% year-end bonus, travel allowance, internet allowance, home working allowance and pension accrual with ABP. The contract is first for 1 year and can be extended in case of proper functioning.

For all information and application procedure please use this link