A 3 years PhD position will be available on sturgeon conservation genomics starting from October, with application deadline in May.

PhD scholarship for a project on sturgeon conservation.

A PhD position in Evolutionary Biology will be available ad the Department of Biology of the University of Padova, Italy, under the supervision of Prof. Leonardo Congiu.

The project is part of a larger project conducted by 4 Italian Universities with a big effort of massive sequencing (University of Florence), bioinformatics (University of Trieste) population genomics analyses (University of Ferrara), and in vivo (University of Padua) experiments, aimed at applying a Genomic approach to the conservation of five Italian endemic species (a mammal, a reptile, an amphibian, a fish, and an insect). 

The doctoral project will specifically focus on one of the above species, the Adriatic sturgeon (Acipenser naccarii), a critically endangered sturgeon Endemic to Italy, and will include both field and laboratory activities. 

The PhD project has the following goals:
a) assess the degree of accumulation of potentially deleterious mutations in the small residual population of the Adriatic sturgeon;
b) evaluate the effect of inbreeding on the fitness of 6 inbred and 6 outbred groups of fingerlings, generated by controlled reproduction, by estimating behavioural and physiological variables;
c) identify a panel of ~4,000 SNPs with alleles predicted to be deleterious will be typed in larvae from each cross to infer the pattern of load segregation and the association with the fitness estimates and the crosses (inbred vs. outbred).
d) evaluate the effects of different rearing conditions on the expected survival of released individuals.

The selected candidate is expected be fully involved in the organization, conduction and data analyses of the in vivo experiments that will last the entire first year of activity, supported by post-doctoral fellows and by undergraduate students. In the following years the candidate will be also responsible for the genotyping and related data analyses and will have a primary role in many other planned activities. Finally, the candidate will be in continuous interaction with the other research groups in charge of generating and analyzing genomic data.
 
Potential candidates are strongly encouraged to contact me (leonardo.congiu@unipd.it) to get additional details about the project.

Opening of the official announcement: April 8^th2019

Application deadline: May 17^th2019

Starting: Oct 1st, 2018

For more information:

University of Padova http://www.unipd.it/en/
Department of Biology https://www.biologia.unipd.it/en/
PhD School in Biosciences https://dottorato.biologia.unipd.it/