Help us unravel the effects of environmental factors on immune health in children

3-Year Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Exposome Research and Child Immune Health

Are you interested in understanding how environmental exposures during early life influence immune development and childhood health? We are seeking a highly motivated postdoctoral researcher to join an international Horizon Europe project investigating environmental determinants of immune-mediated diseases and immune health.

The EU Horizon Europe project EXPOSIM studies environmental stressors as causal determinants for immune-mediated diseases to map and prioritise evidence for knowledge-based policy-making. Child cohorts such as PreventADALL (Norway), ENVIRONAGE (Belgium) and FEPOS (Denmark) are included to study associations between early life environmental factors and immune health.

As a partner in EXPOSIM, the Department of Chemical Toxicology at the Norwegian Institute of Public Health (NIPH) will study children from the PreventADALL cohort. Exposome components such as air pollution, green spaces and noise exposure during pregnancy will be modelled by a partner, and associations with immune health until 3 years of age will be explored.

NIPH will integrate a novel set of outcomes of respiratory and immune development. These include foetal thoracic circumference, lung function, biomarkers of asthma, allergic diseases such as atopic dermatitis and food allergy, as well as immunosuppression assessed through vaccination responses to childhood vaccines. To strengthen causality between the observed exposure-health associations, high-dimensional immune cell profiling will be performed by in-depth single-cell (mass cytometry/CyTOF) and multiplex cytokine analyses.

You will work with unique longitudinal data from the PreventADALL cohort and collaborate with leading European researchers in environmental health, epidemiology, immunology, medicine and bioinformatics. The position offers excellent opportunities to contribute to high-quality scientific publications and to develop advanced analytical skills in exposome research, immune profiling and multi-dimensional data integration.

The position starts on January 1, 2027.

Responsibilities

• Analyse associations between environmental exposures and health outcomes using an exposome approach
  
• Explore causal relationships by studying immune profiles (CyTOF) and inflammatory markers (OLINK) using supervised and unsupervised data analysis tools:
  • data-driven clustering, hierarchical and density-based algorithms
  • undirected network models for more mechanistic analyses
  • topological models to integrate cellular data with the other biological and clinical data
• Publish scientific papers and internal reports and present scientific results at conferences
• Participate in consortium meetings and present/discuss plans, status and results
• Collaborate with scientists and engineers in the department and the NIPH mass cytometry platform
  

Qualifications

Required qualifications:

• PhD in a relevant field, such as epidemiology, environmental health, immunology, medicine or bioinformatics. The thesis must have been defended.
• Hands-on experience in biostatistics and/or bioinformatics in exposome modelling
• Hands-on experience with R, and preferably STATA
• Experience with writing and publishing scientific papers as the first author, with documented publications in the last 3 years
• Good written and oral communication skills in English
  
  

Preferred qualifications:

• Experience with immune-mediated outcomes and knowledge of immunology
• Experience with multi-omics integration for analysis of high dimensional data, multiple testing and causal frameworks
• Hands-on experience developing pipelines for single-cell analyses and/or exposome statistics

The Norwegian Institute of Public Health (NIPH) collaborates with Semac to conduct background checks on relevant candidates. Any background check will be carried out only with your consent as an applicant and involves verifying your CV and other application documents in connection with the hiring process.

Personal attributes

We are looking for someone who:

• has good cooperation skills to work efficiently with multiple partners nationally and internationally.
• enjoys interdisciplinary research and collaboration
• is proactive, structured and capable of working independently
• has strong analytical and problem-solving skills
• communicates scientific results clearly
• thrives in an international research environment
  

Personal suitability will be emphasised.

We offer

The Norwegian Institute of Public Health is a unique workplace with a significant social responsibility and plays an important role in the health and well-being of the population.

• Access to unique national and international cohort data
• Collaboration with leading European research institutions through the EXPOSIM consortium
• Opportunities to develop expertise in exposome science, immune profiling and advanced integration of high-dimensional data
• The opportunity to work alongside dedicated and highly competent colleagues who are supportive and help one another
• Strong professional environments and emphasis on each employee's development and influence over their own working day
  
• Full-time position (100%) as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow (Code 1352) for a period of three years, with a salary ranging from 730 000 - 780 000 NOK per year, based on the individual's qualifications, skills, and experience
• Good pension schemes through the Norwegian Public Service Pension Fund (Statens pensjonskasse)
  
• Flexible working hour arrangements and good employee welfare benefits, such as the opportunity to exercise during working hours
  

The Norwegian Institute of Public Health (FHI) aims to foster a culture of diversity, inclusion, and equal opportunities for everyone. We believe this contributes to a broader range of perspectives, increased creativity, and better decision-making. Therefore, we seek employees with diverse skills, interdisciplinary backgrounds, life experiences, and perspectives to help us solve tasks even more effectively. If you have a disability, gaps in your CV, or an immigrant background, we encourage you to indicate this in Webcruiter when applying. If there are qualified applicants within these groups, we will invite at least one candidate from each group for an interview. We provide accommodations for employees who need them. Relevant accommodations may include technical aids, adapted furniture, or adjustments to routines, work tasks, and working hours. The information provided through these selections is used to generate anonymized statistics, which all government agencies report in their annual reports.