The Position

Anthropogenic activities are leading to global climate change at an unprecedented rate. Understanding the mechanisms of how coral reef fish cope with environmental shifts is imperative to understand their fate in a changing planet. Little is known about the genomics mechanisms of rapid evolution or phenotypic plasticity in the adaptive response of coral reef fish to changing ocean conditions.

We seek a highly motivated postdoctoral fellow in Molecular Ecology, Genomics, or Computational Biology/Bioinformatics to join the Marine Climate Change Unit/Ravasi’s Unit at OIST to work on a long-term project that aims to understand the effects of climate stressors (i.e., ocean acidification and warming) on coral reef fishes. Our main goal is to understand fish acclimation or adaptation to climate change at the genomic level. By using a set of unique multi-generational experiments combined with Next-Generation Sequencing approaches such as genome, epigenome, and transcriptome sequencing, we are trying to unveil the genetics and epigenetics mechanisms underlying fish responses to climate change. The successful candidate will be able to look at a variety of data, including physiological responses, but will mainly be working on the computational analysis, integration, and visualization of genomics, epigenomics, and transcriptomics datasets. A considerable amount of new and unpublished sequencing datasets has already been generated and is immediately available for this project.

About OIST

The Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University was established in 2011 to contribute to the development of science and technology worldwide and to serve as a hub of innovation in Okinawa. OIST is a dynamic new graduate university of science and technology in Okinawa Prefecture, Japan, which offers a 5-year PhD program and brings together outstanding researchers from across the country and across disciplines to conduct cutting-edge scientific research.

The university is located on 85 hectares of protected forestland overlooking a beautiful shoreline and coral reefs. The campus is striking architecturally, and the facilities are outstanding. To facilitate multidisciplinary research, there are no academic departments. Outstanding resources and equipment are provided and managed to encourage easy access and collaboration.

English is the official language of the University, and the university research community is fully international, with more than 50 countries represented. OIST is rapidly gaining recognition in the worldwide academic community as a model for excellence in education and research, and our unwavering commitment to scientific and technological innovation is dedicated to generating progress that will fuel Okinawa's economic growth.