CeMM International Postdoc Program (Vienna, Austria) Pre-ERC Postdoc Program (m/f/d)

We are recruiting a group of postdocs who are eager to pursue ground-breaking biomedical research, and wewill help them to establish themselves as future scientific leaders. This postdoc program is designed toprepare postdoctoral researchers for a successful ERC Starting Grant application or equivalent and for anindependent research career in top research organisations in Europe and around the world.

The postdoc program is based at the CeMM Research Center for Molecular Medicine of the Austrian Academyof Sciences in Vienna, one of Europe's leading centres for basic biomedical research - with clinical translationin mind. Our partners are the Medical University of Vienna, the St. Anna Children's Cancer Research Institute(CCRI) and AITHYRA, the newly founded Research Institute for Biomedical AI of the Austrian Academy ofSciences. Selected candidates will join one of CeMM's research groups for 3 to 6 years, addressing ambitiousresearch questions in areas such as cancer, immunology, chemical biology, epigenetics, metabolism, genomicmedicine, and ageing research. Research projects will focus on medically relevant problems, includingdisease mechanisms, modern therapeutics, and diagnostic strategies. On top of this, postdocs will receiveextensive career development and leadership training from the entire CeMM Faculty and additional experts ina highly collaborative and supportive environment.

What we offer:

• A unique blend of a frontier research environment at top level with a strong medical and translationalfocus through the hospital setting and the connections to biotech and pharma.
• An international group of highly collaborative colleagues that will help you achieve your scientific andcareer goals.
• Top-notch environment with the ideas, projects, resources, infrastructure, collaborations, and mindsetfor ground-breaking research.
• Excellent track record of past postdocs who have become internationally successful principalinvestigators, professors, entrepreneurs.
• Strong focus on disease biology and translational research: cancer, metabolic disorders,inflammation/infection, aging, drug discovery.
• Interdisciplinary projects connecting biology with medicine, experiments with computation, anddiscovery with translation.
• Unique opportunity to engage in close interactions with physicians and clinical researchers at theMedical University of Vienna on one of Europe's largest medical campuses.
• Opportunities to collaborate with industry (biotech/pharma) and to get involved in academic start-up/spin-off companies.
• Training program in project management, scientific writing, visual communication, entrepreneurship,leadership, and data science.
• Special training for writing successful ERC Starting Grants as a 'ticket' to an outstanding academiccareer.
• Being part of a thriving academic and social community in Vienna, one of the cities with the bestquality of life in the world.
• A competitive postdoc salary of EUR 4,932.90 gross monthly (following the recommendations of FWF),paid 14 times yearly.
• The CeMM employment contract includes full insurance (health, accident, pension) and a one-offpayment for moving from abroad.
• CeMM's HR department and administrative team offer support with relocation, visa applications,onboarding, family support, etc.

Whom we are looking for:

• Candidates who want to pursue innovative biomedical research and substantially advance theirscientific career.
• Candidates with international professional experience and enhanced potential to receive an ERCStarting Grant in the future.
• Open to both PhD (natural sciences) and MD (medical sciences) holders.
• From a variety of academic backgrounds: molecular biology, biomedical research, bioinformatics,biochemistry, bioengineering, etc.
• With the motivation, skills, experiences, and initial achievements (subject to academic age) to qualifyfor a competitive postdoc program.
• Required are scientific quality and originality, as well as a collaborative and interdisciplinary mindset.

Potential Projects

We are open to ideas that fit into the broader scope and mission of the CeMM Research Center for MolecularMedicine and expressions of interest in the research of all groups, but concrete projects and groups offeringpositions are:

• Bioinformatics & ML/AI (Bock Lab). Integrative analysis of single-cell multi-omics and spatial imagingdata in cancer, immunology, organoids, etc., in the context of the Human Cell Atlas (single-cellanalytics) and/or the ELLIS European Lab for Learning & Intelligent Systems (ML/AI).
• Cell engineering for cancer and immune diseases (Bock Lab). Development of innovative technologiesfor biomedical research, for example building upon our work on high-content CRISPR screening (CROP-seq), epigenetic cell states, CAR T cell therapy, or synthetic biology.
• Bioinformatics with a translational focus (Busslinger Lab). Correlate disease activity in ulcerativecolitis patients with transcriptional changes in a longitudinal patient cohort, develop deconvolutionalgorithms, extract features from H&E sections etc.
• Bacterial metabolism and host physiology (Campbell Lab). We will investigate how novel bile acidsproduced by gut bacteria affect host immunity and metabolism, with a focus on intestinal T cells.
• Investigating systemic effects of cancer (Maier Lab). Project I: How does premetastatic remodeling inlymph nodes interfere with anti-tumor immunity? Project II: Do peripheral tumors regulate circuits in thebrain and which physiological processes are controlled by tumor-brain communication?
• Deciphering the code of age-associated pathologies through graph-based models (Rendeiro Lab).

The Institute

CeMM is an international research institute of the Austrian Academy of Sciences and a founding member ofEU-LIFE. The mission of CeMM, the Research Center for Molecular Medicine of the Austrian Academy ofSciences is to achieve maximum scientific innovation in molecular medicine to improve healthcare. At CeMM,an international and creative team of scientists and medical doctors pursues free-minded basic life scienceresearch in a large and vibrant hospital environment of outstanding medical tradition and practice. At CeMM,an international and creative team of scientists and medical doctors pursues free-minded basic life scienceresearch in a large and vibrant hospital environment of outstanding medical tradition and practice. CeMM'sresearch is based on post-genomic technologies and focuses on societally important diseases, such asimmune disorders and infections, cancer, aging and metabolic disorders. CeMM operates in a unique mode ofsuper-cooperation, connecting biology with medicine, experiments with computation, discovery withtranslation, and science with society and the arts. CeMM discovers and develops technologies to explorehuman biology with the purpose of defeating disease at its roots. Because Science is our Medicine! CeMMtrains a modern blend of biomedical scientists and is located at the campus of the General Hospital and theMedical University of Vienna. CeMM is a proud recipient of the HR Excellence in Research Award (HRS4R).This award indicates that CeMM takes care of the well-being of its employees, that the recruitment process isopen, fair, and transparent, and that CeMM offers professional appraisals and career developmentprocedures. More than 150 people from 49 nationalities are working at CeMM. The institute promotes equalopportunity and harbours a mix of different talents, backgrounds, competences, and interests.

Eligibility Criteria:

• You must hold a PhD (or will have been awarded your PhD by the time of starting the Pre-ERC PostdocProgram) and your PhD defence date must be no earlier than 2023.
• You must have at least one first-author publication published by the time of starting the Postdoc.

Application

Please apply online at with 1) a cover letter including a shortsummary of research interests and mentioning which research group(s) at CeMM you would be potentiallyinterested in joining, 2) curriculum vitae (CV), 3) academic transcripts, 4) contact details of three referees and5) candidates will be asked to record a short video answer explaining their motivation to join the CeMM Pre-ERC Postdoc Program. Applications received by 4 June 2025, 11:59 pm CEST will be considered.

Selection Process:

Shortlisted candidates will be invited to participate in online panel interviews with CeMM Faculty members,which will take place in mid-July 2025. At the end of the selection process, candidates will be asked to submittheir preference regarding research groups they would like to work with, which may be identical or differentfrom the original choice indicated in the cover letter.

Information session

At 10:00 am and 5:00 pm CEST on 21 May 2025, CeMM will host an online information event where you will beable to find out more about doing a postdoc at CeMM and applying to the program as well as have the chance to meet and talk directly with current pre-ERC program postdocs. To take part in this event, please sign-uphere Postdoc Open Day - CeMM or visit the postdoc program page of the CeMM website.