"Post Doctoral Researcher"

Job Description

Tennessee State University Agriculture and Environmental Research invites applications for the position of Post Doctoral Researcher.

A post-doctoral researcher position is available for a project on the effects of soil-borne disease management strategies on microbial communities and soil-borne diseases. The candidate will be also characterizing biotic plant stress related factors and abiotic stressors influence soil-borne disease severity. The candidate will be conducting general plant disease diagnoses using microscopy, culturing, serology, PCR, qPCR and survey for plant pathogens in Tennessee nurseries.

The candidate will establish a culture collection of commonly found fungi, oomycetes and bacteria on woody ornamentals in Tennessee for conducting molecular studies to explore their movement within and among nurseries and finally improving the nursery best management practices.

Duties and Responsibilities

• Be able to involve in cooperative work with plant pathologists, horticulturists, entomologists, extension agents/specialists and other disciplines.
• Be able to work independently and use a number of sampling protocols and isolation techniques.
• Have extensive knowledge on molecular techniques commonly used to identify fungi, oomycetes and bacteria. These include methods for metagenomic DNA extraction, PCR, real time-PCR amplification.
• Be able to analyze sequence data, construct phylogenetic trees and genotype populations.
• Be able to do statistical analysis.
• Basic knowledge of mycology and taxonomy of fungi and oomycetes.
• Understand the basic principles of microscopy and be able to make morphological and physiological observations of fungal and oomycetes structures used in morphological classification.
• Preparation of manuscripts to be submitted for peer-reviewed scientific journals.
• Participation in meetings, seminars, talks, lectures, preparation of research results for publication in reports.
• Supervise graduate students, interns and hourly employees in the laboratory or field setting.
• Be able to operate vehicle to collect sample from field.

Specific Abilities/Experience required

Applicants should have a strong interest in integrated disease management, population biology of fungi, oomycetes as well as classical fungal taxonomy to identify unknown genera using microscopy and culture work. Experience with plant disease diagnostics, MLST, Real-time PCR, PCR, sequencing and genotyping are essential. The candidate must have published in peer-reviewed journals.