Jobs in Structural Biology and Related Fields


PhD position in structure-based drug design


University of Bergen, Bergen, Norway
Application deadline: 17 Nov 2019


A PhD position is available at the Faculty of Medicine, Department of Biomedicine, in the group of Professor Ruth Brenk. The positions include 25 % required duties such as teaching, exam work or supervision, depending on the demands at the department.

The position is part of the project “RESPONsible early Digital Drug Discovery – RESPOND3: Towards better computational approaches and responsible innovation strategies in early drug discovery: application to antibiotics and COPD” financed by The Research Council of Norway. The RESPOND3 project is part of the Centre for Digital Life Norway and is a cross disciplinary collaboration between research groups at the Centre for Advanced studies in Biomedical Innovation Law at the University of Copenhagen, the Department of Computing, Mathematics and Physics at the Western Norway University of Applied Sciences, the Department of Biomedicine at the Faculty of Medicine and at the Department of Chemistry at the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences at the University of Bergen.

The main focus of RESPOND3 will be hit and lead optimization for targets for antibiotics (SAM riboswitch) and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (proteinase 3) guided by the use of computational methods as well as the development of new scoring functions using machine learning. The entire project is embedded in a responsible research and innovation strategy.

The main objectives for the PhD position are:
• to derive data sets for the development of new scoring functions for protein-ligand interactions with machine learning methods
• to retro- and prospectively evaluate the derived scoring functions
• to design ligands with improved affinities for the targets in the RESPOND3 project
• to supervise master students


This PhD project will be conducted in collaboration with the group of Matthias Rarey at the Center for Bioinformatics of University of Hamburg (Germany) implying that this position will involve short research stays in his lab.

For more information and to apply, click here.

Bergen, Norway

PhD position in structure-based drug design