The University Hospital Essen offers first class medical services in the Ruhr metropolis. Every year, 225.000 patients are treated in 30 clinics, 27 institutes and specialized centers. The over 8.000 employees offer medical care with state-of-the art diagnostics and therapies, which meet highest international standards. Patient care is connected with basic and translational research at an internationally competitive level.

Work Area: Department of Urology - Research laboratory
Pay grade: EG 13 TV-L
Job ID: 13346
Start Date: Next possible Date
Work Scope: part-time employment / 25,025 h
Contract Type: temporary
Contract duration: 36 month, for the duration of the project § 2 (2) WissZeitVG Project “Multimodal dissection of immunotherapy resistance in kidney cancer: mechanisms and predictive biomarkers”
Non-clear cell renal cell carcinoma (nccRCC) is a heterogeneous group of aggressive kidney cancers in which response to immune checkpoint inhibitors remains unpredictable. The international CRITERIA consortium aims to understand why some patients respond to immunotherapy while others do not by integrating histopathology, spatial biology, and multi-omics profiling.

Within this project, the Grünwald lab will investigate spatial tumor organization programs (“histo-archetypes”) and their cellular and molecular composition. By combining classical histopathology with advanced omics measurements and patient-derived model systems, we seek to identify clinically actionable biomarkers and mechanistic principles of immune evasion in human RCC.
The position is embedded in a multidisciplinary and international collaboration including pathologists, oncologists, immunologists, and computational biologists (Germany & France) working on patient-derived clinical samples.

You will work at the interface of precision pathology and experimental systems biology:

Identify spatial tissue “histo-archetypes” associated with therapy response
Perform histology-guided laser capture microdissection followed by multimodal OMICs analyses
Integrate imaging, proteomic and transcriptomic datasets to nominate candidate driver and marker genes
Functionally validate your findings in vitro using cell models and patient-derived fragment cultures
Help develop deep learning models for segmentation and classification of histological whole-slide images
Collaborate with clinical and computational partners both locally and across the consortium
Meticulously document your experiments and findings
Participate in meetings and seminars: regular presentation of the current status of your project with the aim of discussing scientific progress and possible improvements, both internally and at conferences
We are looking for a curious and motivated researcher with strong quantitative thinking:

Master’s degree in molecular biotechnology, biochemistry, biomedicine, biomedical engineering, or related field
Alternatively, Master’s degree in bioinformatics, or related field, with proven record of wet-lab based training
Strong interest in biomedical research and a deep understanding of molecular biology and cancer biology
Experience with cell culture work, ideally patient-derived model systems
Experience with or strong training in computational data analysis using R, Python or similar language
Experience with or strong interest in tissue-based analyses, ideally
histology/histopathology or digital image analysis
Strong motivation for self-directed problem solving and troubleshooting
Excellent teamwork skills and willingness to collaborate within an interdisciplinary team of biologists, physicians, and bioinformaticians
Very good English communication skills (written and spoken)

Full funded 3-year PhD position
Access to cutting-edge methodologies and infrastructure
A supportive, international collaborative team environment
Opportunities for training and career development within a structured graduate program
A secure job in the public service of th...