Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Institute of Physical Chemistry, Polish Academy of Sciences, Poland. Prof. Wlodzimierz Kutner, Ph.D., D.Sc., (Group of Molecular Films Research, http://ichf.edu.pl/res/res_pl/Z02_EN.pdf) seeks a candidate for the post-doctoral position within the framework of the Project, entitled: “Selective recognition of toxic heteroaromatic amines and N-nitrosamines in protein providing food products”
General information: High temperature frying, broiling, or grilling protein providing food products, such as meat, fish, poultry, and eggs, generates in these products toxic heteroaromatic amines and N-nitrosamines. Continuous exposure to low doses of these toxins causes several chronic diseases, serious hormonal dysfunctions, and cancer. Currently used procedures for determination of these toxins in food matrices are either expensive or tedious and time-consuming. Therefore, fast, inexpensive, simple, and reliable determination procedures, without need of separation of these toxins, in the protein food matrices are in demand. Expectantly, dedicated chemical sensors (chemosensors) will meet this demand. Therefore, the research objective is to devise these chemosensors along with the relevant determination procedures. As recognition units in these chemosensors, the candidate will use conducting polymers molecularly imprinted with the target toxins. Molecularly imprinted polymers (MIPs) can mimic recognition properties of biomolecules, such as antibodies and enzymes.
However, MIPs are more stable and easier to prepare than their biological counterparts are while revealing comparable selectivity. Selective determination of toxins in the protein providing foods is challenging because of matrix complexity. The post-doctoral research fellow recruited will accomplish a fundamental toxicology research focused on designing, synthesizing, and applying to the toxin chemosensing new artificial recognition MIP materials and will develop dedicated procedures for selective determination of these toxic food contaminants.
As platforms for transduction of the recognition signals into analytically useful signals, the successful candidate will use most appropriate electrochemical, spectroscopic, and piezoelectric microgravimetry techniques as well as those involving extended-gate field-effect transistors (EG FETs). Therefore, a researcher is sought who will design and prepare new functional and cross-linking monomers capable of both electrochemical polymerization and non-covalent, covalent, and semi-covalent imprinting.
Moreover, responsibility of this researcher will involve molecular modeling of pre-polymerization complexes and molecularly imprinted polymer (MIP) cavities with the medium effects taken into account; generating the IR and Raman spectra of these complexes and polymers; molecular dynamics of MIP formation; artificial neural networking of matrices of individually addressed chemical sensors (e-tongues) with MIP recognition units. Furthermore, this researcher will determine analytical parameters of the chemosensor devised and develop relevant procedures using these chemosensors for toxin determination in real food samples.
No. of positions available : 1
Research Fields
Chemistry – Molecular chemistry
Career Stage
Experienced researcher or 4-10 yrs (Post-Doc)
Benefits: Salary in the total amount of ~8700 PLN with social and health benefits
Further details: www.ichf.edu.pl/job
Requirements: Required Education Level Degree is PhD or equivalent in Chemistry.
Years of Research Experience 4
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Application deadline: 25 Nov 2015
