Jobs in College Park, MD

About the role

The Joint Institute for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition (JIFSAN) at the University of Maryland (UMD), in collaboration with the UMD Center of Excellence in Microbiome Sciences, invites applications for a Postdoctoral Research Associate position in food safety microbiology and microbial genomics. We seek a highly motivated recent PhD graduate with expertise spanning both computational and experimental biology. The successful candidate will join an interdisciplinary research team led by Professors Mihai Pop (Department of Computer Science) and Jianghong Meng (Department of Nutrition and Food Science). The research program focuses on foodborne pathogens, microbial genomics, microbiome science, and AI-driven large-scale data analysis for food safety applications. Professor Pop’s laboratory develops novel algorithms and software tools for the analysis of biological and microbiome data. His group has created widely used bioinformatics tools, including the sequence aligner Bowtie, the metagenomic assembler MetaCarvel, and the microbiome statistics package metagenomeSeq. Current research efforts focus on understanding strain-level variation within microbial communities and investigating how database errors influence downstream analytical pipelines. This position offers an outstanding opportunity to engage in cutting-edge, multidisciplinary research with strong relevance to both academia and industry. The successful candidate will work in a highly collaborative environment at the intersection of microbiology, genomics, bioinformatics, and artificial intelligence, with opportunities for professional development, publication, and collaboration across multiple scientific disciplines. For more information on Regular Faculty benefits, select this link .

What you'll bring

• Ph.D. degree in Microbiology, Molecular Biology, Bioinformatics, Computational Biology, or a related field.
• Experience in computational biology, bioinformatics, genomics, or AI applications in biological research (1-3 years).
• Experimental laboratory experience in microbiology and/or molecular biology (1-3 years).
• Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities: Strong interest and background in microbial genomics and food safety microbiology.
• Demonstrated ability to work independently and think critically.
• Strong organizational skills, attention to detail, and scientific writing abilities.
• Excellent communication and teamwork skills.
• transcribing
• viewing a computer terminal;
• extensive reading.
• Moving about to accomplish tasks or moving from one worksite to another.
• The person in this position needs to occasionally move about inside the office to access file cabinets, office machinery, etc.