We are always interested in hearing from people who want to work on cancer metastasis with CRISPR. The lab is small, so everyone runs their own project and learns the whole pipeline — from designing a screen to validating a hit at the bench.
Who we are looking for
Undergraduate and Master’s students (TFG / TFM)
We take a small number of TFG and TFM students each academic year, usually from the degrees in Pharmacy, Biochemistry, Biotechnology and Biology at UCM. You will join an ongoing project rather than a side exercise, and you will learn cell culture, molecular cloning, CRISPR editing and the validation workflow we use for every clone.
PhD candidates
Three doctoral theses are currently running in the lab. New positions depend on funded calls — FPU and FPI at national level, and the Comunidad de Madrid predoctoral contracts. If you are thinking of applying to any of these with us, write well before the deadline: a competitive application takes months to prepare, not weeks. We are also happy to support applications from candidates with their own funding.
Postdoctoral researchers
We welcome enquiries from postdocs interested in applying for Juan de la Cierva, Ramón y Cajal, Marie Skłodowska-Curie or AECC fellowships to work with us on CRISPR screening in metastasis.
What you will learn
- Genome-wide CRISPR/Cas9 screening — loss-of-function (GeCKO) and gain-of-function (SAM) libraries.
- Design and cloning of CRISPR constructs, and generation and validation of knockout and knock-in cell lines.
- Bioinformatic analysis of pooled screens with MAGeCK, and interpretation against DepMap, BioGRID ORCS and cBioPortal.
- In vitro and in vivo metastasis models: migration, invasion and dissemination assays.
- Image analysis and quantification in Python.
How to apply
Send an email to alguuz@ucm.es with:
- Your CV.
- A short paragraph on why this lab and this problem — not a generic cover letter.
- Your availability: start date and how long you can stay.
- For PhD and postdoc enquiries, which call you are planning to apply to.
We read everything and reply, even when the answer is that we have no space at that moment.
