The AIT Austrian Institute of Technology is Austria’s largest Research and Technology Organisation (RTO). We aim to transform scientific excellence into innovation with impact. Together with our partners, we develop technologies and solutions for a sustainable, resilient, and digitalized future, strengthening Europe’s competitiveness and technological sovereignty. Our international teams combine cutting-edge research with strong implementation expertise to create measurable value for industry and society.
Our competence unit Bioresources located in Tulln (in immediate vicinity to Vienna) invites applications for a PhD Thesis position. Our team includes world-leading experts in deciphering plant-microbe interactions with elaborated methodological skills and profound scientific insights in the ecology and physiology of fungi, bacteria and plants. As part of our digital transformation strategy, the AIT Research Acceleration Platform (ARA) of which our Bioresources team is a critical part, integrates cutting-edge process automation, digital infrastructure, and data governance to accelerate scientific breakthroughs across disciplines such as novel battery materials, energy conversion and storage materials, microbiome engineering in agriculture and health or light-metal alloys.
The PhD project will focus on functional validation of microbiome modulators for soil-plant systems and development of prediction models to facilitate data-driven developments in the future. Microbiome modulators, such as microbial strains or defined microbial communities (DMCs), are intended to shift microbiome composition and function toward beneficial traits such as improved plant stress tolerance, nutrient availability or soil health.
The central objective of the PhD is to establish a realistic and reproducible verification workflow for soil-plant microbiome modulation. The work will combine plant trials under controlled conditions, microbiome profiling, plant phenotyping, integration of environmental metadata and statistical modelling. The candidate will help to develop criteria to decide whether a predicted microbiome modulation effect is experimentally supported, reproducible and relevant for agricultural or environmental applications.
PhD Thesis “Prediction and Functional Validation of Microbiome Modulators for Improved Soil-Plant Resilience”
CENTER FOR HEALTH & BIORESOURCES
- You contribute to the ARA-BIO research acceleration platform by developing a first functional verifier for soil-plant microbiome modulators, as part of a research approach for environmental and agricultural applications.
- You curate and structure microbiome, plant phenotype and environmental metadata for selected soil-plant use cases.
- You select candidate microbiome modulators based on existing strains, DMCs and available data.
- You conduct controlled tests to assess the effects on plant performance, microbiome composition and functional read-outs.
- You apply statistical and machine-learning approaches to link microbiome patterns, metadata and phenotypic outcomes.
- You define experimental pass/fail criteria, assay limitations and failure modes for a first ARA-BIO functional verifier.
- You collaborate with interdisciplinary teams working on data-driven microbiome solutions, improved crop production and research acceleration platforms, while benefiting from AIT’s expertise in microbiome profiling, plant-microbe interactions, phenotyping and microbial product development.
- You prepare scientific high-quality publications and contribute to project reports, presentations and stakeholder communication, with your findings also serving as a potential basis for development of follow-up projects.
Your qualifications as an Ingenious Partner:
- Master’s degree in microbiology, microbial ecology, plant sciences, bioinformatics, environmental biotechnology, agricultural sciences or a related field
- Experience in standard microbiological and molecular biological methods, plant experiments execution and phenotypic analysis, sequence-based microbiome data analysis
- Basic knowledge of statistics, R/Python or bioinformatics
- Strong interest in soil-plant microbiomes, microbial inoculants, biostimulants or microbiome engineering
- Interest in interdisciplinary work between microbiology, plant science and data science
- Ability to work independently while contributing to a collaborative research environment
- Very good command of English (spoken and written). German knowledge is beneficial.
What to expect:
- Start date: 01.01.2027
- Deadline application: 30.11.2026
- EUR 2.832,10 gross per month (14 times / year), for 30 h / week
- Highlights of our employee benefits include a canteen and meal allowance, organic coffee, tea and fruit baskets, preventive healthcare benefits and company doctor, pension fund, additional days off for various life events, family benefits (including two weeks of paid paternity leave “Papa-Weeks” and leisure subsidies), voucher programme, sports, cultural and socialising events, travel support for conferences and individual training and career development opportunities. In addition to this, you will also join our AIT PhD Programme with around 150 students, benefiting of networking events and various workshops.
At AIT, we create an inclusive and family-friendly working environment that promotes equal opportunities and actively strengthens diversity across our workforce and in leadership positions. Among other initiatives, we are committed to increasing the proportion of women in our company and therefore particularly welcome applications from female applicants.
Please submit your documents including your CV, cover letter (ideally one page, including a brief introduction of yourself, an explanation how your previous studies and experience have prepared you for this PhD position, and a motivation why you are interested in this specific position), your certificates (Transcript of records) as well as a proof of identity.
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