Recrutement

Institution

EHESP-School of Public Health is a scientific, cultural and professional public institution. EHESP is a member of the network of public service schools (RESP), France Universities and the conference of Grandes écoles (CGE). EHESP is also a component institution of the University of Rennes (Public Experimental Institution, “EPE”).
As a platform for teaching and research in public health, EHESP is structured in departments (human and social sciences / management institute / quantitative methods in public health / environmental health sciences) integrated into an interdisciplinary project including certified research centers. EHESP offers training courses for senior managers for civil service, national master’s degree, specialized master’s degrees, doctoral program and a very rich offer of lifelong learning.
EHESP welcomes 1,300 students or doctoral students and 7,000 trainees in professional development from 50 different nationalities and invites more than 1,000 lecturers per year.
Oniris VetAgroBio is an institute in higher education and research that operates under the aegis of France’s ministry of agriculture and food sovereignty. Its work covers a broad spectrum of subjects that includes animal health and public health, clinical and biomedical studies, food science, and process engineering. Oniris VetAgroBio aims to be a player in the food industry and in animal and human health by actively contributing to the concept of ‘one medicine, one health’.
Oniris teaches around 1,200 students and offers training courses that are designed for Veterinary careers (veterinary surgeon diploma) and Engineering careers (engineer diploma) in the fields of agrifood and nutrition.

Department

This position is in the Department of Environmental Health Sciences and is attached to the Environment and Health Research Laboratory (Leres), one of the analytical platforms of the Research Institute for Environmental and Occupational Health (Irset-Inserm UMR 1085). Irset is one of Europe's leading exposomics research centres performing innovative research in genomics, transcriptomics, analytical chemistry, toxicology, exposure science, epidemiology and risk assessment. The Leres facility is fully equipped with innovative mass spectrometry instruments (MS/MS and HRMS) to assess human exposure to inorganic and organic mixtures.
This position is also hosted by LABERCA, a research Unit belonging both to OnirisVetAgroBio and INRAE (French national research institute for agriculture, food and environment). LABERCA is supporting risk assessment and management public authorities with regard to chemical food safety (generation and interpretation of external exposure data, transfer and metabolism of chemicals from their sources to the consumers through the food chain) and environmental health (human biomonitoring, link between the characterized chemical exposure and human health outcomes). LABERCA apply both conventional targeted approaches and suspect / non-targeted screening methods. Its analytical platform encompass more than 20 last generation mass spectrometry instruments including both LC-MS/MS, LC-HRMS, GC-MS/MS and GC-HRMS. All activities (assays and research) are conducted under management quality system combining accreditation (ISO 17025, ISO 17043) and certification (ISO 9001:2018).

Research field

Researcher profile:

We seek a highly motivated and enthusiastic candidate with a PhD in the area of HRMS-based exposomics or advanced analytical chemistry with experience and demonstrated success of working independently and as part of a team in analytical or academic research facility. Essential skills for this job include experience in biological sample preparation techniques; strong practical expertise in liquid chromatographic and gas chromatography methods, LC- and GC-HRMS based metabolomics and experience in HRMS software (e.g., XCMS, MS-DIAL) for data pre-treatment, statistical analyses and marker annotation.
The position will include close collaborations with epidemiologists, clinicians and biologists.
Research field:
This position is part of an inter-regional (Pays-de-Loire / Bretagne) project funded by the Cancéropôle Grand Ouest, aiming at using innovative chemical profiling methods based on high-resolution mass spectrometry (HRMS) to investigate the environmental etiology of the hepatocellular Carcinoma (HCC) in the context of the metabolic steatosis pandemic. We hypothesize that exposure to complex chemical mixtures (Real-life Human chemical exposome) holds etiological clues to Steatosis liver diseases – NAFLD (non-alcoholic fatty liver disease) and ALD (alcoholic liver disease) – which have become the main causes of HCC in developed countries, including France. Other components of the Environmental and Societal Exposome will be also investigated within the project. The project will leverage both two existing cohorts (the HCC Angers cohort and CHIEF French national cohort) and two new prospective cohorts at regional scale (one with adult HCC patients and the other with young obese patients), to build up a bank of data (biological and psychosocial), hitherto lacking, and for which the main clinicians are stakeholders in the project.
Years of research experience: 1 or 2 years after PhD

Activities

We are offering an exciting postdoctoral position involving advanced analytical chemistry activities supported by the Laberca and Leres facilities. The envisaged workplan will be based on an already existing methodological basis, that will be adapted/optimized to the present real case application. You will first process the blood and urine samples thanks to low selectivity protocols in order to capture a wide range of exogenous organic chemicals present in the considered human samples. You will then use both GC-Orbitrap and UHPLC-ESI-QTOF instrumentations to detect a wide range of chemical exposure markers present at trace levels in these complex biological matrices. In-house automatized pre-annotation workflows to speed-up the annotation of complex HRMS datasets will be finally part of the applied protocols, followed by state-of-the-art bio-informatics and statistical data processing and analysis methods aiming to annotate a maximal number of detected chemicals. The candidate will then work in close collaboration with epidemiologists for etiological research.

Qualifications and skills required

Education level / Professionnal experience :

• PhD in HRMS-based exposomics
• Analytical chemistry

Skills :

• biological sample preparation techniques,
• strong practical expertise in liquid chromatographic methods,
• GC- and LC-HRMS based chemical exposomics
• Expertise in HRMS software (e.g., XCMS, MS-DIAL) for data pre-treatment, statistical analyses and marker annotation.
• Required languages and level expected: English (fluent, mandatory), French (bases, ideally)

Additional information

• Location : Oniris (Nantes, France) and EHESP (Rennes, France). Full-time for 24 months

• Cover letter and detailed resume to be sent by e-mail: Arthur.DAVID(at)ehesp.fr ; jean-philippe.antignac(at)inrae.fr

• Application deadline : 15th September 2024

• Offer starting date: 15th January 2025

• Is the job funded through the EU Research Framework Programe? Reference number? No

• Science4refugees? No

• Is the job related to staff position within a research infrastructure? Yes (France Exposome)

• Eligibility criteria: PhD in HRMS-based exposomics

• Selection process: interview after shortlisting of candidates

Les substances per- ou polyfluoroalkylées (PFAS) constituent une large famille de plusieurs milliers de composés chimiques. Elles présentent de nombreuses propriétés (antiadhésives, imperméabilisantes, résistantes aux fortes chaleurs) qui ont encouragé leur fabrication puis leur utilisation par de multiples secteurs industriels depuis les années 1950. Les PFAS sont des molécules très persistantes, largement répandues dans l’environnement, bioaccumulables vie entière et bioamplifiables dans les chaînes trophiques.

Les propriétés (i.e. physico-chimie, toxicité, écotoxicité, impacts sur la santé humaine et la biodiversité…) de certaines molécules (PFOA, PFOS…) sont bien connues et les méthodes analytiques pour leur détection et leur mesure sont accessibles en routine, permettant leur surveillance dans différents milieux. Pour ces quelques molécules, les connaissances disponibles ont d’ores et déjà abouti à la mise en œuvre de mesures réglementaires visant à prévenir certains risques associés à leurs usages. Pour l’immense majorité des autres PFAS, les connaissances sont parcellaires, voire absentes, mais incitent désormais à un niveau accru de vigilance et d’action vis-à-vis de l’ensemble des substances répondant à la définition de l’OCDE.

A l’échelle nationale, un plan d’action interministériel, publié en avril 2024, structure les actions en réponse aux préoccupations grandissantes concernant les impacts des PFAS sur la santé humaine et la biodiversité pour répondre aux enjeux sanitaires et environnementaux.

Dans ce contexte, le LABERCA, (Laboratoire d’Etude des Résidus et Contaminants dans les Aliments) Laboratoire National de Référence pour ces composés et unité mixte de recherche (UMR1329 INRAE/Oniris) recrute un scientifique afin de développer des approches analytiques ciblées, robustes et à haut débit pour la détection de ces contaminants prioritaires.

Contacts

• Philippe MARCHAND, responsable de l’Unité Contaminants, philippe.marchand(at)oniris-nantes.fr
• Bruno LE BIZEC, directeur, bruno.lebizec(at)oniris-nantes.fr

Qualifications

• Solide formation en chimie analytique avec un master ou un doctorat en chimie, génie chimique, chimie analytique ou équivalent.
• Expérience pratique de l'élaboration de méthodes analytiques et de l'analyse avancée de données dans le cadre de l’analyse en chromatographie et en spectrométrie de masse multidimensionnelle et/ou à haute résolution.
• Une expérience ou des connaissances dans un ou plusieurs des domaines suivants seraient appréciées :
  • Contaminants chimiques, PFAS en particulier
  • Automatisation
  • Exposomique

Conditions

• Contrat à durée déterminée 12 mois prolongeable 12 mois
• Salaire selon diplôme et expérience.

Pour postuler, veuillez envoyer vos CV, lettre de motivation, classement en Master et vos recommandations dans un seul document pdf à philippe.marchand(at)oniris-nantes.fr

Supervisors

Gaud Dervilly

Qualifications

Candidates must also fulfil the MSCA Doctoral Networks Eligibility Criteria stated below.

PhD rule: Applicants must be doctoral candidates, i.e., must not already be in possession of a doctoral degree at the date of recruitment.

Mobility rule: Researchers must not have resided or carried out their main activity (e.g., work, study) in the country of the host organisation for more than 12 months in the 3 years immediately before the recruitment date (i.e., start of employment).

Application

To apply, please send your CV, covering letter, classification and recommendations in a single pdf document to the main supervisor gaud.dervilly(at)oniris-nantes.fr

ONIRIS, LABERCA, France, offers a PhD position in the framework of the MSCA Doctoral Network MobiliTraIN (Ion Mobility Mass Spectrometry Training Network). The project aims to bring a new fundamental understanding of ion mobility-high resolution mass spectrometry (IM-HRMS), provide reference materials and guidelines for standardisation, develop state-of-the-art methods for the application of IM-HRMS in biopharmaceutical development, biological omics studies and non-target screening of contaminants, and lay the foundations for the adoption of IM-HRMS in industry by training 13 doctoral candidates.

The PhD project offered aims to integrate Ion Mobility (IM) into NTS workflows to answer current needs in understanding consumer’s chemical exposure.

Secondments:

This project is carried out in strong collaboration with the following groups, and visits to their laboratories are expected during the project. A willingness to travel and spend time abroad is therefore essential.

• U Antwerpen (Belgium), 3 months, Validation of CCS database using alternative analytical platform (DTIMS) in an academic environment.
• AFIN-TS (Germany); 2 months; Comprehensive evaluation of new LC-IM-HRMS methods with established LC-HRMS in a commercial NTS laboratory.
• Waters (UK), 1 month; Implementation of high-resolution cyclic ion mobility to study complex arrival time distributions.

Skills/Qualifications

Educational Qualifications:

• A master's degree (or equivalent) in a relevant field such as Chemistry, Biochemistry, Biophysics, or a related discipline.

Analytical Chemistry:

• Strong background in analytical chemistry and expertise in analytical techniques - mass spectrometry in particular- would be a plus

Data Processing and Analysis:

• Skills in data analysis, including interpretation of mass spectrometry data and statistical analysis.
• An interest and skills in computer programming, for example in Python or R, would be an asset for the development of customised data acquisition and analysis strategies.

Interdisciplinary Research:

• Ability to work in an interdisciplinary research environment, bridging the fields of chemistry and informatics.

Communication Skills:

• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to present research findings effectively.

Collaboration and Teamwork:

• Ability to collaborate with research groups both within Oniris and during secondments to external institutions.

Adaptability:

• Willingness to adapt to new methodologies and techniques, especially during secondments to industry and academic partners.

Motivation and Initiative:

• Intrinsic motivation to contribute to the objectives of the MobiliTraIN project and the ability to take initiative in research activities.

Specific Requirements

• Mass Spectrometry Skills.
• Proficiency in operating and troubleshooting mass spectrometry instruments.
• Programming and Bioinformatics: Familiarity with relevant programming languages (e.g., Python, R) and bioinformatics tools for data analysis would be a plus

A 12 (+12) month post-doctoral position is available at LABERCA (UMR1329 Oniris-INRAE, Nantes, France) in the framework of the PARC project (Partnership for Assessment of Risk of Chemicals, EU Horizon EU Cofund, 2022-2029, https://www.eu-parc.eu/). The earliest possible date for taking up the post is 1^st May 2023.

Background

Food is one of the main sources of exposure to numerous contaminants for the general population. These contaminants are from different origins, some are anthropogenic (Flame retardants, plasticizers etc.), others are from the crust of the earth (heavy metals for example). These substances may be all found in non-trace concentrations in food (See results of total diet studies performed in France, Germany, UK etc.). Estimating the dietary exposure of the population (or sub populations) to these substances individually led, in some cases, to set maximum limits in food (Regulation EC 1881/2006 for PCBs, Cd, Pb etc.). Additionally, mixtures of contaminants are present in food and despite some proposed approaches to assess the risk due to such mixtures, risk assessors face difficulties to draw firm conclusions on the risk related to the mixtures. Other challenges associated with human risk assessment include the proper assessment of long-term chronic exposure, which involves taking into account not only exposure measurements at a given point in time, but also a sufficient number of measurements to reflect the exposure of individuals over their lifetime. We have previously shown that exposure to contaminants changes over a lifetime, highlighting the needs to assess the exposure and risk at different ages that take into account varying lifestyles, as well as socio-economic and environmental factors. This need appears especially for persistent contaminants accumulating in the body over time (e.g. heavy metals, POPs). In our previous and ongoing work, we have applied and confirmed the usefulness of PBPK modelling to reconstruct human internal exposure to individual organic contaminants (PCBs, BPA) or heavy metals (Cd) from external dietary exposure assessments over the life span. This approach is currently pursued to model exposure to mixtures of heavy metals over a lifetime taking into account the different interactions that can occur between them from both a kinetic and dynamic point of view.

Objectives

From this existing conceptual and methodological basis, the aim of the present project, envisaged over 2 years with a post-doctoral fellow, is to extend this PBPK modeling approach to even more complex real life chemical mixtures, combining both organic and inorganic contaminants. This extension better reflects the exposure patterns to which populations are really exposed. Based on the extended PBPK model, the project’s overall objective is to estimate the lifetime exposure of the population to these mixtures and to perform a first risk assessment based on a chronic toxicological endpoint shared by the different substances (developmental neurotoxicants for instance) of the mixture considered.

From this general objective, the project will focus more precisely on:

• Particular co-exposure patterns as observed in selected food items/habits, e.g. high levels of both heavy metals and POPs in biggest consumers of fatty fish.
• Specific sub-populations that are more vulnerable and / or over exposed, e.g. pregnant women…
• Particular health outcomes possibly associated to a given co-exposure, then used as a rationale for prioritizing the chemical mixture (based on external or internal exposures) in the envisaged PBPK modeling work.

Supervisors

Pf. Bruno LE BIZEC (Oniris)

Dr. Gilles RIVIERE (ANSES)

Qualifications

We are looking for a highly motivated scientist with a University PhD and advanced experience in toxicokinetics applied to the characterisation of human exposure to chemicals. More specifically, the candidate is expected to possess:

• A strong background in PBPK modeling
• Knowledge in chemical risk assessment
• Good toxicology skills
• A strong interest for interactivity and interdisciplinary work
• Excellent communication skills in French and in English

Salary

The period of employment is 1 year, open for one additional year, gross salary 2875 €/month.

Application

Please submit your application before 15th of November 2023.
Applications must be submitted to bruno.lebizec(at)oniris-nantes.fr and Gilles.RIVIERE(at)anses.fr as one pdf file containing all materials to be given consideration. The file must include:

• A covering letter
• A curriculum vitae
• Supporting letters