Posted by s.hettrick on 10 March 2016 - 11:04am

The Plant and Fungal Trees of Life project (PAFTOL) at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew wants to recruit three new positions:

1. Senior Researcher (PAFTOL Sampling & Project Co-ordination) 
2. Senior Researcher (PAFTOL Phylogenomics) 
3. Lead Developer-Bioinformatician (PAFTOL)

Kew is a global resource for plant and fungal knowledge. We are seeking talented, creative individuals with outstanding track records to help us build the Plant and Fungal Trees of Life, a major piece of global science infrastructure that is central to RBG Kew’s Science Strategy 2015-2020. This is a unique opportunity to be part of a team addressing a critical challenge in the life sciences. Are you up to the task? If so, read on to find out more.

The project

There are few grander challenges in science than the tree of life - uncovering the complete evolutionary history linking all life on Earth. As part of RBG Kew’s Science Strategy 2015-2020, we are initiating a five-year multimillion-pound project, the Plant and Fungal Trees of Life (or PAFTOL, for short), to complete the tree of life for all genera of plants and fungi, drawing on our outstanding collections, our broad collaborative networks and the latest high-throughput sequencing technologies. 
This ambitious project will create a unifying framework for comparative plant and fungal research and takes us a step closer to building the tree of life for all known species. We will generate high impact findings publishable in top science journals, but we want the results to reach beyond the science community. To achieve this we will build innovative big-data and visualization tools accessible to a scientist or a school child. PAFTOL has recently secured generous funding from the Calleva and Sackler Foundations, and we are now ready to get the work underway. This is a truly exciting time to join Kew and become an integral part of a high-profile, cutting edge global endeavour. 

The team

At Kew, you'll be joining a truly multidisciplinary team comprising experts from across a range of fields including systematics, evolution, genomics, bioinformatics, spatial analysis, data architecture and software development. At this time, we are recruiting into three senior positions in phylogenomics, sampling/co-ordination and software development/bioinformatics. We expect to hire three further support positions later this year. You'll work alongside a highly supportive team of Kew staff who have actively developed the PAFTOL concept. 

The roles

We are currently recruiting into the following three roles.

Senior Researcher (PAFTOL Sampling & Project Co-ordination) 
Senior Researcher (PAFTOL Phylogenomics)
Lead Developer-Bioinformatician (PAFTOL)