We invite you to apply for a PhD position supported by the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Doctoral Network 101226731-HEAL4-WARD doctoral network for Wound infection Advanced care and Rapid Diagnosis funded by the European Commission’s Horizon Europe programme HORIZON-MSCA-2024-DN-01.
This doctoral training program offers an exceptional opportunity for highly motivated candidates to pursue cutting-edge research on the application of plasmonics and surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) for assessment of bacterial-regulated processes and therapy in models of wound infections in vitro.
The PhD project will be carried out in the Funnanobio research group (https://funnanobio.webs8.uvigo.es) at the University of Vigo, which is focused on the design and fabrication of plasmonic nanoparticles and novel nanostructured materials for chemical and biological applications. The project will be supervised by Prof. Gustavo Bodelón González (ORCID: 0000-0003-2815-7635) in collaboration with Prof. Isabel Pastoriza Santos (ORCID: 0000-0002-1091-1364) and Prof. Jorge Pérez Juste (ORCID: 0000-0002-4614-1699).
The employment will initially be limited to three years and payment will be according to EU regulations.
Project:
You will be involved in the part project DC10: Development of bioengineered plasmonic platform for in vitromanagement of chronic wound infections by label-free SERS
The project aims: 1) to develop a bioengineered 3D plasmonic platform featuring increasing complexity towards a full-skin human model for assessing chronic wound infections and antimicrobial therapies by label-free SERS detection/imaging; 2) to establish successful bacterial infection in the bioengineered plasmonic 3D models with clinically relevant bacterial species (P. aeruginosa and S. aureus); and 3) to monitor bacterial infection and antimicrobial intervention non-invasively by label-free SERS.
The successful candidates will be required to work in a team and cross-culturally at international level. They must be prepared to travel to conferences and network training events, and to take part in an academic and non-academic secondments abroad.
Start date: 4th May 2026.
Applicant Profile:
Applicants should have a Master Degree in Materials Science, Nanotechnology, Chemistry, Biological Engineering, or similar, interested in SERS, colloidal nanoplasmonics for biomedical applications and biological sciences.
Important: Applicants must not have resided in Spain for more than 12 months in the past three years.
Please send your full application to Prof. Gustavo Bodelón (gbodelon@uvigo.es) by February 28th; include, as a single PDF, your CV, publication record, all academic certificates (including transcripts) and the names of two references who are willing to provide letters of recommendation upon request. Send copies of your documents, as no returns will be made. The documents will be destroyed after a holding period of five months.
University of Vigo aims to increase the proportion of women in this field. Therefore, women are strongly encouraged to apply.
We look forward to hearing from you!