Fellows recruitment

Accelerate the paradigm shift in life sciences

As a DDLS Fellow, you will be part of the next-generation of data-driven life scientists and create globally leading computational and data science capabilities in life science in Sweden. You will accelerate the data-driven paradigm shift in life sciences, and conduct research at the global frontline within your field of interest.

Advances in computational capabilities, AI, machine learning and other technologies, provide enormous new opportunities for unbiased ways to analyze data and to promote biological discoveries, insights on life as well as promote innovation and translate research into societal benefits.

Take part in forming a research community of world-leading caliber

As a DDLS Fellow, you will be recruited directly to the participating organization, which means you’ll be able to utilize its strong local research environment and unique capabilities. At the same time, you’re connected to the national DDLS program, and you take part in forming a strong, interdisciplinary community with researchers working with the rapidly expanding resources and needs of open data in life sciences, creating synergies for the entire life science ecosystem.

You’ll also be connected to SciLifeLab’s infrastructure – spanning technologies and expertise within everything from genomics, metabolomics and spatial omics, to drug development, diagnostics, single cell biology and bioinformatics – and the dynamic research community formed around it.

Connect with initiatives across disciplines and sectors

All DDLS fellows will be focused on one of the four strategic research areas within the program (cell and molecular biology, precision medicine and diagnostics, evolution and biodiversity, epidemiology and infection biology), and will interact within as well as across the areas.

The program also promotes collaborations with industry, healthcare and other national and international partners – such as WASP (the Wallenberg AI, Autonomous Systems and Software Program, with the aim of bridging the life science and data science communities) and the Wallenberg Centers for Molecular Medicine (WCMM).

Tenure track positions

SciLifeLab, DDLS, and the hosting universities care deeply about supporting the long-term career of all fellows, and recruitments will be done under tenure track principles, with an evaluation (typically after 4-5 years) assessing whether the criteria for permanent tenured faculty employment are fulfilled. All fellow positions hosted at the higher education institutions (i.e., apart from NRM) will be as “associate senior lecturer”, which means 4-6 years of employment and a guaranteed right to apply for non-competitive tenure promotion before the end of this period.  Each higher education institution decides the formal assessment criteria of their evaluation, which typically involves proven excellence in research, teaching and leadership (see UHR, The Higher Education Ordinance). The tenure track period can be extended due to parental leave, sick leave, or other special grounds. While the tenure track legislation and appointment does not formally apply to NRM, the recruitment will be handled similarly and the successful candidate will be evaluated non-competitively with an opportunity for permanent tenured employment.

Enabling interdisciplinary research to understand life from all different perspectives

In the first episode of the SciLifeLab Talk Show 2020, we check in with SciLifeLab Fellow Sarahi Garcia (Stockholm University) to hear more about her research and newly started group. What’s her passion, and why did she become a researcher?

“I really appreciate that SciLifeLab is looking to invest in technology to be able to understand all levels of biology. And I think it’s a great opportunity to interact with different types of scientists that think different than I do, and that we can become more interdisciplinary as we interact”, Sarahi says.

Connecting to SciLifeLab at different stages of your scientific career

In episode 4 of the SciLifeLab Talk Show 2020, we meet SciLifeLab Fellows Alexandra Teleki, researcher at Uppsala University, and Paul Hudson, researcher at KTH Royal Institute of Technology, and hear what being connected to SciLifeLab has meant to their research. We also meet Alba Corman, at the time doing her last year as a PhD student at Karolinska Institutet (and previous member of the SciLifeLab PhD Council) and a number of other researchers.

“Being connected to SciLifeLab has meant that my research has expanded quite a bit […]. It’s exposed us to new technology, like next generation sequencing, quantitative proteomics, microfluidics… State-of-the-art technology that we now have access to and people to collaborate with to help us learn these technologies. It’s allowed us to answer questions about bacterial metabolism that I don’t think would have been possible without. And selfishly, it’s also allowed me to separate myself in the field. Carve out a niche for myself, and sort of take a unique angle in this field of bio sustainability”, says Paul Hudson.

“Coming from an engineering perspective, working as material engineers, being within SciLifeLab has really helped us to talk with medical scientists and get closer to the clinics in order to identify the needs there. And to then really develop the nanotechnology towards real application, towards what is needed in the clinics. This wouldn’t be possible if we wouldn’t be located in this type of community. And of course, also supported by the infrastructure of SciLifeLab, that gives us access to state-of-the-art imaging techniques. So we are really […] expanding our research into areas which I don’t think we would have been in otherwise”, says Alexandra Teleki.  

Infusing key competencies into Sweden’s life science research

In this video, we meet, among others, SciLifeLab Fellows Sebastian Deindl (Uppsala University) and Kristina Jonas (Stockholm University) and learn more about their research and experience being SciLifeLab Fellows.

“It’s been a great experience working at SciLifeLab, it’s really been a wonderful ride so far. Setting up the lab, having sufficient funding to pursuit also slightly more ambitious and risky projects, and working with a wonderful group of young talented scientist”, Sebastian Deindl says. “I think for me, the first and foremost benefit has been to be part of the SciLifeLab Fellows community, where you have many talented scientists recruited from many different places in the world, having different backgrounds and training, and it really makes for a very sort of dynamic and young spirit.”

“One of the primary benefits of the unique environment that SciLifeLab provides, is that it allows for establishment of new and interdisciplinary collaborations. I have gained, during the time I was working at SciLifeLab, that I got exposed to a new research direction. In my group, we study the molecular aspects of bacterial cell cycle regulation and growth control, and we have started a collaboration to address how the molecular mechanisms that we study in the lab, are relevant to bacteria outside in the nature. And so, this opens up many new questions that I’m very interested to address in the future, and I’m sure that I would not have entered this new research area if I would have been at a different institute”, says Kristina Jonas.