Stellenticket Berliner Hochschule für Technik

The use of insect pro­tein derived from by-products and resid­ual streams from the cul­tiv­a­tion and pro­duc­tion of food could sig­ni­fic­antly improve the sus­tain­ab­il­ity of animal hus­bandry by clos­ing gaps in nutri­ent cycles. However, the eco­nomic pro­duc­tion of insect pro­tein can be chal­len­ging due to insuf­fi­ciency of spe­cific­ally optim­ised pro­duc­tion and pro­cessing meth­ods and there­fore, it can­not com­pete in price with con­ven­tional pro­tein feeds such as fish meal or soy. In addi­tion, the value-added poten­tial of insect ingredi­ents has hardly been exploited so far. Mak­ing sci­entific con­tri­bu­tions, min­im­ising future pro­tein defi­cits and at the same time improv­ing the sus­tain­ab­il­ity of food pro­duc­tion as well as increas­ing the eco­nomic viab­il­ity of insect pro­teins are the over­arch­ing goals of the pro­ject. Focus­ing on the black sol­dier fly, Her­metia illu­cens, which is prom­ising for feed and food pro­duc­tion, the fol­low­ing sub-object­ives are pur­sued: 1) a bet­ter under­stand­ing of nutri­ent util­isa­tion and nutri­ent require­ments of insect lar­vae, 2) their applic­a­tion for pro­duc­tion-rel­ev­ant quant­it­at­ive and qual­it­at­ive improve­ment of sus­tain­able insect pro­duc­tion through the util­isa­tion of rel­ev­ant residues, 3) detailed know­ledge of con­sumer- and author­ity-rel­ev­ant micro­bi­o­lo­gical para­met­ers in the con­text of insect pro­tein pro­duc­tion, and 4) the eval­u­ation of the use of insect pro­tein in an innov­at­ive prac­tical trial for feed­ing in aquacul­ture.

Your respons­ib­il­it­ies

• Plan­ning and con­duct­ing exper­i­ments to eval­u­ate insect-sub­strate inter­ac­tions, con­sid­er­ing safety aspects along the insect pro­duc­tion chain
• Adapt­ing avail­able micro­bi­o­lo­gical tech­niques (MALDI-ToF, DNA sequen­cing, etc.) to determ­ine the dynam­ics of micro­bial com­munity dur­ing insect cul­tiv­a­tion and pro­cessing
• Broad­en­ing the spec­trum of spe­cific ana­lyt­ical meth­ods to eval­u­ate the entire insect pro­cessing path­ways
• Present­a­tion of pro­ject res­ults at sci­entific con­fer­ences and stake­holder meet­ings
• Writ­ing pro­ject reports and sci­entific pub­lic­a­tions

• An attract­ive, inter­dis­cip­lin­ary work­ing envir­on­ment in a team of exper­i­enced and young sci­ent­ists and tech­ni­cians
• Excel­lent infra­struc­ture for car­ry­ing out sci­entific work
• Oppor­tun­ity to do a doc­tor­ate within the pro­ject includ­ing the pos­sib­il­ity to par­ti­cip­ate in struc­tured doc­toral pro­grams
• Access to national and inter­na­tional net­works for your sci­entific career
• Fam­ily-friendly work­ing con­di­tions that pro­mote the com­pat­ib­il­ity of work and fam­ily life
• Com­pany-owned elec­tric bicycles for busi­ness trips
• Par­ti­cip­a­tion on the VBB com­pany ticket
• Our insti­tute is loc­ated on the edge of a pic­tur­esque park-like land­scape and is easy to reach by pub­lic trans­port or by bike

The part-time pos­i­tion (75%) is lim­ited until Octo­ber 31st, 2024. An exten­sion for a fur­ther 6 months is pos­sible sub­ject to the approval of the reques­ted fund­ing.

The salary will be based on your qual­i­fic­a­tion and pro­fes­sional exper­i­ence accord­ing to TV-L up to salary group 13.

For fur­ther inform­a­tion, please con­tact Dr.-Ing. habil. Oliver Schlüter (E-Mail oschlueter@atb-potsdam.de) and visit our web­site www.atb-potsdam.de.

If you would like to con­trib­ute your pro­fes­sional com­pet­ence to our inter­dis­cip­lin­ary research, please apply by the fol­low­ing dead­line August 21st, 2022 using ATB’s online applic­a­tion form for the job advert­ise­ment, code 2022-6-3, at https://www.atb-potsdam.de/en/career/vacancies. Applic­a­tions received after the applic­a­tion dead­line can­not be con­sidered.

Equal­ity of oppor­tun­ity is part of our per­son­nel policy. Dis­abled applic­ants with adequate qual­i­fic­a­tion will be pref­er­en­tially con­sidered.

By sub­mit­ting an applic­a­tion, you agree that your job applic­a­tion doc­u­ments will be stored for a period of six months, even in the case of an unsuc­cess­ful applic­a­tion. Fur­ther inform­a­tion on the pro­cessing, stor­age and pro­tec­tion of your per­sonal data can be found at https://www.atb-potsdam.de/en/services/data-protection-declaration-for-the-application-process .