announces a position as
Professor of Anatomy
Please select one of the links below for further information:
General conditions
Application procedure
Academic environment
Contact
General conditions
Applicants should have an excellent track record as an independent researcher in the life sciences, with a bias towards the practice of morphological methods. The successful candidates will be expected to establish an independently funded research programme, as well as to instruct students in gross anatomy, histology and embryology. He/She should hold an MD-degree and have considerable experience in the teaching of anatomy and an outstanding publication record. According to the successful candidate’s qualifications for the position, he/she will be engaged either as a full or an associate professor. In the latter case, subsequent promotion to the status of full professor would be feasible. The successful candidate will be free to pursue his/her own choice of research topics, which need not be related to those already established in the department of medicine. Women scientists are strongly encouraged to apply.
Application procedure
Hard copies of the documents listed below (1-7) should be forwarded by post and electronically to the Prof. Rolf Ingold (mailing addresses follows the list):
1. A letter of application and motivation
2. A complete curriculum vitae
3. A complete list of publications
4. A detailed record of teaching experience
5. A record of past and present funding
6. A one to two pages description of the applicant’s intended research programme.
7. The names and addresses (postal and e-mail) of three persons who could be contacted as referees.
Deadline for the applications: 31 January 2011
Postal address for applications:
Prof. Rolf Ingold
Dean of the Faculty of Sciences
University of Fribourg
Chemin du Musée 8
CH-1700 FRIBOURG
Switzerland
E-mail address for applications:
sylvain.debrot@unifr.ch
Academic environment
• Study programme
In accordance with the Bologna Declaration of 1999, the faculty of science adopted the bachelor’s / Master’s Degree curriculum in 2004.
The Department of Medicine offers four three-years Bachelor’s Degree curricula: BMed in Human Medicine, BSc in Biomedical Sciences, BSc in Biochemistry and BSc in Sport Science and Motor Control, and one eighteen-month Master’s Degree Programme: MSc in Biology,Biochemistry (visit this link). Also offered are two-year courses in either pharmacology or Dental Medicine, which contributes to a bachelor’s Degree in each of these disciplines.
A Master’s Degree programme: MSc in Biomedical Sciences is offered conjointly by the Universities of Fribourg and Bern. Most of the courses appertaining to this programme are conducted at the latter venue, but the thesis project can be executed in the laboratories of either host. Further education at the postgraduate level is offered within the “Doctoral School’’ comprising the universities of Fribourg, Neuchatel, Lausanne, Geneva and Basel which together run a joint lectures and summer schools («Troisième Cycle» programme). A special training programme in Neurosciences is conjointly offered by the universities of Fribourg and Bern. A similar training programme in Cardiovascular Research is offered by the French-speaking universities (including Fribourg).
• Languages
Undergraduate teaching courses offered by the Faculty of Sciences are bilingual (French and German) and students have the option of being examined in either language. At the Master’s and Doctoral Degree levels, the courses are conducted in English.
The successful candidate will be obliged to teach in one of the two official languages (French or German), and he/she must be willing to acquire a reasonable level of competence in the other within a few years.
• Administrative structure
The Faculty of Science is comprised of seven departments (Mathematics, Computer Science, Physics, Chemistry, Geosciences, Biology and Medicine) and one Institute (AM-Institute for Material Science and Nanoscience).
The Department of Medicine hosts four units, namely, Biochemistry, Physiology, Anatomy and Sports. Five professors are engaged for each of the first three units, and one for the last.
A fifth Unit is now being established together with the Hospital of Fribourg to manage the third-year programme of Human Medicine. Nine professors will be engaged to oversee the following domains: Microbiology, Pathology, Cardiology, Neurology, Pharmacology, Immunology, Psychiatry and Social Medicine.
The organizational set-up of the department is similar: each is under the auspices of a president who is elected from amongst its professors for a two-year period. Major decisions are taken by the departmental councils, which comprise the teaching staff and student representatives.
The Unit of Anatomy engages five professors, six assistant scientists and three and half lecturers (“Oberassistenten”/“maître-assistant”), who are distributed amongst the various research groups. Doctorandi are usually financed by the Swiss National Science Foundation (or another grant agency); their teaching activities are paid for by the unit. The salary of a doctorand amounts to about 60% of that of an assistant scientist.
• Research focus
Research activities conducted in the Department of Medicine embrace a variety of topics: Seven groups work in the field of the neurosciences, three in that of the cardiovascular system, two on the lipid biology of yeast, and one on nutritional signalling in yeast.
The Unit of Anatomy currently hosts four research groups, which work in the following fields:
Hypothalamic organization (Marco Celio)
Stucture, function and development of the visual system (Robert Kretz)
Calcium binding proteins in the brain and cancers (Beat Schwaller)
Renal function in health and disease (Franziska Theilig)
• Infrastructure
The new Professor of Anatomy’s laboratory will be located in the Unit of Anatomy. He/she will thus have ready access to the equipment of the Departments of Medicine and Biology.
| Instruments and equipment of the Department of Medicine |
Electron microscopy
Confocal microscopy
High resolution light microscopy with deconvolution
FACS (analytical and preparative)
Ultracentrifugation
C lab
Autoclaves
Tissue culture facilities, BL 2 labs
HPLC, Dionex HPLC
FPLC
Roboter for SGA (pinning for 384 whole plates)
96-well-plate readers for chemiluminescence, fluorescence, photoabsorption
2D UV-light detectors for TLC, gels, Western blots
Odyssey Imaging system (LI-COR)
Real-time PCR
Phosphoimager
Radioscanning for TLCs
|
Animal facilities
SPF-facility for mice
Animal facilities for mice, rats, zebrafish.
|
Technical infrastructure of the Anatomy Unit
|
Instruments
The Unit of Anatomy possesses the installations necessary for conducting routine morphological, biochemical and molecular-biology experiments including cold rooms, centrifuges, fluorescence microscopes, two laser scanning confocal microscopes, a transmission electron microscope, a scanning electron microscope, an FPLC-apparatus, C-labs, an ELISA-reader, biosafety level-2 facilities, tissue-culture facilities, micromanipulators, and the infrastructure for housing mice (SPF) and rats. |
Computers
The University’s computer service furnishes all Departmental members (academic and technical staff) with state-of-the-art PCs and Macs. The Faculty provides a thirty-two-node cluster, which is equipped with dual sixty-four-bit Opteron processors. |
Store
The Faculty of Science runs a store, which is situated in the basement of the neighbouring Chemistry building, where chemicals, glassware and other laboratory equipment and office supplies can be purchased at advantageous prices. A large store of plastic ware and other miscellaneous items is located in the basement of the Biochemistry building. |
• Financial situation
Running expenses
The Department has an annual credit of 300'000 CHF, the exact amount depending on the number of research groups and students, and the extent of funding from external sources. About two-thirds of this credit is consumed administratively and in the upkeep of the infrastructure (e.g. printing and copying costs, maintenance of equipment, purchase of solvents, chemicals and gases, and running the animal-keeping facilities). The other third is distributed amongst the research groups on the number of collaborators-weighted basis. Each group is allocated an annual credit of 5'000 to 15'000 CHF.
Instruments
The Department of Medicine receives a further credit of 300'000 CHF for the purchasing equipment. This credit is allocated on the proposition basis. Propositions for the purchasing of particularly expensive instruments must be submitted directly to the Faculty which awards special credits that must be matched by external funding.
Set-up funding
The new professor of Anatomy will be granted 80’000 (associate professor) or 150’000 CHF (full professor) over a two or three year period, respectively, for the purchase of research equipment. An additional 5’000 CHF will be made available for the purchase of books. Resources for computing material will be at the new Professor’s disposal.
Positions attached to the professor position
The new Professor of Anatomy will receive one doctor assistant (associate professor) or one doctor assistant and one Oberassistant (full professor) and one technician. He/She will have access to services of the secretaries.
Contact
Further information may be obtained from Prof. M. Celio
E-mail address: marco.celio@unifr.ch
Telephone number: +41 26 300 84 91 / 26 300 85 40
