SPACE-MEL is recruiting 15 enthusiastic, talented and driven Doctoral Candidates (DCs) who are highly motivated to become interdisciplinary researchers and professionals at the interface of spatial biology, single-cell and multi-omics technologies, computational biology, artificial intelligence and melanoma precision medicine. Through individual research projects, secondments and network-wide training, the DCs will develop scientific, technical and transferable skills while working across academic, clinical and industrial environments.
All recruited DCs will be employed full-time for 36 months by their respective recruiting organisation and enrolled in a PhD degree programme. The projects are embedded across the four scientific work packages of SPACE-MEL and are supported by interdisciplinary supervisory teams and extensive intersectoral secondments.
- DC1 – KU Leuven (Leuven, Belgium): 3D spatial multiomics
- DC2 – Erasmus MC (Rotterdam, Netherlands): 3D spatial FUN-G&T-seq and/or scNMT-seq
- DC3 – Erasmus MC (Rotterdam, Netherlands): 2D spatial FUN-G&T-seq and/or scNMT-seq to study melanoma subpopulations
- DC4 – University of Zurich (Zurich, Switzerland): Development of a spatial multi-omic approach integrating spatial proteomic and transcriptomic data
- DC5 – University of Zurich (Zurich, Switzerland): Development of a spatial multi-omic approach integrating spatial metabolomic, glycomic and transcriptomic data
- DC6 – KU Leuven (Leuven, Belgium): Integration of AXO DBiT-seq-based and COMET technologies
- DC7 – KU Leuven (Leuven, Belgium): Development of novel integrative spatial multi-omics approaches combining transcriptome, protein and lipidome
- DC8 – KU Leuven (Leuven, Belgium): Development of AI-driven multi-modal data fusion strategies for rare disease
- DC9 – Intelligent Biodata (San Sebastián/Donostia, Spain): Development and implementation of a Large Language Model for Natural Language Processing of multi-modal spatial embeddings in melanoma research
- DC10 – University of Manchester (Manchester, UK): Development of a dermatopathology foundational model
- DC11 – Aspect Analytics (Genk, Belgium): Development of a framework to analyse multicellular environments
- DC12 – University of Perugia (Perugia, Italy): Identification of novel predictive markers in mucosal melanoma
- DC13 – University of Florence (Florence, Italy): Development of novel prognostic biomarkers for mucosal melanoma
- DC14 – Maria Skłodowska-Curie National Research Institute of Oncology (Warsaw, Poland): Investigating microenvironment and sub-clonal heterogeneity of mucosal melanoma upon progression
- DC15 – Erasmus MC (Rotterdam, Netherlands): Prognostic spatial multi-omics biomarkers in early-stage melanoma