We are looking for a Postdoctoral Fellow that is strongly motivated by the intersection between extremophile microbiology and astrobiology / planetary science. The PDF would have a leadership role in conducting science investigations and managing 2 Canadian Space Agency (CSA) FAST-funded projects. The first project includes developing and optimizing Nanopore sequencing as a biosignature detection instrument platform for future planetary science missions while the second project is focused on developing drilling techniques to obtain samples from the Devon Island Ice Cap overlaying the recently discovered hypersaline, subzero Devon Island Subglacial Lake System, a unique Mars and icy moon analogue site.

The projects will combine aspects of microbial ecology, genomics (metagenomics, genome binning, metatranscriptomics, single cell microbiology), bioinformatics approaches (programming languages) to characterize these microbial ecosystems and their metabolic activities and adaptations. The PDF will help supervise graduate students and undergraduate summer students for microbiome analyses of the Arctic samples in both laboratory and field investigations. The PDF will also work with engineering students to develop the Nanopore biosignature platform and clean ice drilling and sampling technologies in collaboration with Honey Robotics (USA).