4 PhD positions in Quantitative Biology

Introduction

UNIL is a leading international teaching and research institution, with over 5,000 employees and 17,000 students split between its Dorigny campus, CHUV and Epalinges. As an employer, UNIL encourages excellence, individual recognition and responsibility.

Presentation

Modern biological and medical research is increasingly driven by quantitative approaches. As data generation technologies rapidly evolve—offering higher throughput, greater precision, and a broader range of measurable biological features—there is a growing need for advanced computational methods to transform this complexity into meaningful insights.

Computational Biology has emerged as a central discipline in this transformation, enabling the life sciences to tackle fundamental and clinical questions with unprecedented depth and scale.

At UNIL's Faculty of Biology and Medicine (FBM), this shift is well underway. The Faculty hosts a dynamic research environment, including:

• The Department of Computational Biology (DBC), with nine research groups focused on fundamental aspects of computational biology;
• The Biomedical Data Science Center (BDSC), currently home to four groups specializing in computational clinical research;
• Numerous additional groups across departments and institutes developing and applying state-of-the-art computational methods to diverse biological and biomedical challenges.

UNIL also hosts the headquarters of the Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics, to which many quantitative research groups are affiliated, and closely collaborates with EPFL on the same campus. Ideally situated along the lake of Geneva, near Lausanne's city centre, UNIL brings together over 120 nationalities.

UNIL's FBM has established a doctoral program in "Quantitative Biology" (QB) to federate the recruitment of and exchange between PhD students from areas as diverse as

• Computational Biology
• Systems Biology
• Bioinformatics
• Statistical Genetics
• Artificial Intelligence
• Machine learning
• Omics Data Analysis
• Image Processing

In 2025, hiring principal investigators include Sven Bergmann (DBC), Oliver Y. Chen (CHUV), Giovanni Ciriello (DBC), and Marianna Rapsomaniki (CHUV).

Selected candidates will be contacted before December 22 and invited to Lausanne for lab visits and interviews on January 26-27, 2026.

Job information

Expected start date: or to be agreed

Successful candidates will be offered a work contract with a highly competitive salary and including social security, for up to 5 years.

Your qualifications

We are accepting applications from talented and enthusiastic candidates who are interested in joining dynamic, well-supported labs at a top research institution. Candidates need to have a computational background in a relevant area, such as computational biology, bioinformatics, (bio)engineering, computer science, physics, math, as well as a completed a Master's degree before the start date of their doctoral studies. We also welcome students with a life science background (e.g., biology, medicine or similar), provided they have already acquired knowledge on computational biology (for example, data science or machine learning) and have strong programming skills, as exemplified by completed projects (ideally, their Master thesis).

A high level of written and spoken English proficiency is required since most scientific activities are conducted in English.

What the position offers you

You will develop your research project while working in a world-class, interdisciplinary and highly collaborative environment.

Our QB PhD program provides opportunities for professional training and acquisition of highly transferable skills. This is complemented by a wide range of activities (retreats, symposia, student life).

All positions are fully funded. Salary and benefits are internationally highly competitive. Additional funding for consumables, computing, and to attend international conferences is available.

Contact for further information

Prof. Marianna Rapsomaniki & Prof. Sven Bergmann

(directors of QB program)

&

Your application

Deadline:

For your application to be considered, you need to fill in two forms. Please read these instructions carefully.

The first form, on this page, requires the following informations:

• Personal details
• A cover letter. This can be very brief, since you will provide your motivations in the second form below.

• A single PDF document containing:

• Your curriculum vitae (with extracurricular activities, internships, publications, conferences, awards, software contributions, etc.)

• Available transcripts (Bachelor's and, if available, Master's)
• Bachelor or Master's thesis summary, preferably, or summary of any research project you've been involved in. If the work is part of a team, please clarify your contribution.
• The names and contact details of 2-3 referees

The second form, linked here, requires you to answer the following questions

• Your E-mail
• Your first name
• Your last name
• What is your most meaningful research experience to date and why? Please provide the big picture of your problem, how you approached it, what came out of your work, and what you would have done next. Keep in mind that your essay may be evaluated by a professor from a different field, so avoid jargon and don't assume field-specific knowledge (limited to 1500 characters).
• Why would you like to pursue a PhD in quantitative biology? Why did you choose a specific PI(s)? (Limited to 1500 characters)
• Which recruiting lab are you the most interested in? (Choose up to three recruiting professors. Please note that the choices are not binding at this stage, and could still be updated after interviews. To learn more about the recruiting professors, please check out their websites, which are linked above)
• When did you obtain your Masters degree, or when do you expect to obtain your Masters degree?
• At what University did you obtain (or will obtain) your Masters degree?
• In which country?
• Pubmed ID of your publications (if any)
• Research experience abroad?
• E-mail address of your Reference 1 (References will only be contacted if you are ranking in the top 25% of all applicants)
• E-mail address of your Reference 2
• E-mail address of your Reference 3 (optional)
• Any other comment (optional)

If (and only if) you are unable to access the form #2 on Google Forms (e.g. connecting from China), please answer the following questions in an email to our Administrative Coordinator Melinda Mischler (melinda.).

Additional information

UNIL is committed to:

• equality, diversity and inclusion within its community;
• ensuring an open and respectful environment that is conducive to personal development;
• offering working conditions that facilitate work-life balance;
• supporting early career researchers.

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