Postdoctoral Fellow- Santos Lab

The Research Group

The Quantitative Stem Cell Biology lab, headed by Dr Silvia Santos, was established in 2018 at the Francis Crick Institute. The lab’s primary focus is understanding cell decision-making. Current areas of research include understanding regulatory mechanism regulating cell fate specification, cell cycle remodeling during cellular differentiation and the interplay between metabolism, cell cycle and cell fate. There is a strong focus on single cell analysis, advanced live cell imaging, multi-omics approaches and computations. The lab uses a variety of model systems: mouse and human embryonic stem cells (ESC), 3D organoid models of mouse and human development and mouse embryos. The team is multi-disciplinary, diverse and currently composed of four PhD students, one undergraduate student, one bioinformatician, one post-doctoral fellow and one senior laboratory research scientist. The Santos lab promotes independent, creative thinking and provides excellent training and mentorship.

The Project

A potential project is to understand the interplay between cell division and cell identity during human development, reprogramming and disease using hESC and organoid models.

In this project, some of the specific aims include but are not limited to:

• To use genome editing technologies to perturb the cell cycle-cell identity cross-talk
• To measure cell cycle dynamics during cellular transitions by state-of-the-art live cell imaging
• To integrate sequencing (OMICS) and imaging data sets

The successful candidate will have the opportunity to decide on the exact project(s) they want to undertake during their postdoc time in the lab.  Specifics of different projects will be discussed with Dr Silvia Santos. The successful candidate can either choose one of these projects or decide to undertake a new, independent project within the lab’s interests.