1 Post-Doctoral Fellowship on Plant Growth Modeling for Genotype Differentiation in France | French National Institute for Agricultural Research

The French Institute for Modeling living systems (IMSV) has been created to develop formal and shared representations of biological systems, seizing the opportunities opened up by the associated "data deluge" from biological platforms and the concomitant need for quantitative modeling. This multi-scale enterprise, from bacteria to canopies, develops fundamental and translational research based on methodological developments and sharing of expertise between biologists and scientists from diverse “formal” sciences (bioinformatics, computer science, mathematics, physics) working in research teams of the Paris-Saclay University. The IMSV will recruit this year 8 post-doctoral fellows and 8 computer engineers, which, with the permanent staff, will take up these ambitious challenges.

The proposed post-doctoral fellowship is open in the ‘plant modeling’ research axis of IMSV. Its objective is to explore the capacity of plant models to account for the genotype by environment interactions, and thus to differentiate genotypes based on different parameter sets. The plant model is Arabidopsis thaliana, which has been widely studied at different scales from gene to phenotype.

The main steps of the project are:

1) Development of a mechanistic plant growth model for Arabidopsis thaliana, based on some pre-existing models from IMSV groups: the description of the physiological processes should be refined enough to allow capturing the genotype differentiation. Plant structure and ecophysiological functioning will be detailed, as well as the interaction with the soil water and nitrogen resource through the root system and the effects of water and nitrogen constrains.

2) Development of proper statistical inference methods for the model parameterization and the genotype differentiation. Most model parameters are hidden parameters that have to be estimated from experimental data through inverse statistical methods. Specific estimation methods are necessary to be able to differentiate between genotypes with statistical significance.

3) Parameterization of the model from existing sets of phenotypic data for several genotypes of Arabidopsis thaliana. This step will also imply testing different model configurations, and choose the most appropriate one by model selection techniques.

4) Evaluation and exploration of the model behavior, relying on powerful sensitivity analysis methods.

DURATION: up to 24 months

OPENING: From 1st of April, 2014 onwards

CANDIDATE PROFILE: Applicants should hold a PhD in plant growth modeling, biomathematics or statistics, with a strong interest in plant biology. They should have experience in modeling, programming, and parameter estimation. Applicants must have excellent communication skills, be able to organize their own work with minimal super- vision, and to prioritize their work to meet deadlines. Preference will be given to applicants with a proven research record and publications in relevant areas

HOST RESEARCH TEAMS: The selected candidate will be hosted in Paris suburb at the MAS lab (Ecole Centrale Paris) and at the EGC unit (INRA). She/he will have strong interactions with the other teams of IMSV as well as the other postdoctoral and engineer recruited fellows.