3-Year Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Exposome Research and Child Immune Health

Are you interested in understanding how environmental exposures during early life influence immune development and childhood health? We are seeking a highly motivated postdoctoral researcher to join an international Horizon Europe project investigating environmental determinants of immune-mediated diseases and immune health.

The EU Horizon Europe project EXPOSIM studies environmental stressors as causal determinants for immune-mediated diseases to map and prioritise evidence for knowledge-based policy-making. Child cohorts such as PreventADALL (Norway), ENVIRONAGE (Belgium) and FEPOS (Denmark) are included to study associations between early life environmental factors and immune health.

As a partner in EXPOSIM, the Department of Chemical Toxicology at the Norwegian Institute of Public Health (NIPH) will study children from the PreventADALL cohort. Exposome components such as air pollution, green spaces and noise exposure during pregnancy will be modelled by a partner, and associations with immune health until 3 years of age will be explored.

NIPH will integrate a novel set of outcomes of respiratory and immune development. These include foetal thoracic circumference, lung function, biomarkers of asthma, allergic diseases such as atopic dermatitis and food allergy, as well as immunosuppression assessed through vaccination responses to childhood vaccines. To strengthen causality between the observed exposure-health associations, high-dimensional immune cell profiling will be performed by in-depth single-cell (mass cytometry/CyTOF) and multiplex cytokine analyses.

You will work with unique longitudinal data from the PreventADALL cohort and collaborate with leading European researchers in environmental health, epidemiology, immunology, medicine and bioinformatics. The position offers excellent opportunities to contribute to high-quality scientific publications and to develop advanced analytical skills in exposome research, immune profiling and multi-dimensional data integration.

The position starts on January 1, 2027.

Responsibilities

• Analyse associations between environmental exposures and health outcomes using an exposome approach
• Explore causal relationships by studying immune profiles (CyTOF) and inflammatory markers (OLINK) using supervised and unsupervised data analysis tools
• Publish scientific papers and internal reports and present scientific results at conferences
• Participate in consortium meetings and present/discuss plans, status and results
• Collaborate with scientists and engineers in the department and the NIPH mass cytometry platform