Two research fellowships for Master's graduates

We are offering two Master's graduates a head start on their PhD. Each fellow spends seven months in the lab, from December 2026 to June 2027, starting their own research and building a strong application to the 2027 FCT PhD studentship call with Ricardo Henriques. The fellowships pay €1,359.64 per month and are funded by our ERC Consolidator Grant, SelfDriving4DSR.

065/BI/2026 is for a biologist and studies how bacteria enter human cells. It uses a natural model, the midbody remnant, a bacterium-sized particle released at the end of every cell division and later engulfed. You will follow remnants with adaptive, AI-guided microscopes from their release to their uptake, and compare that uptake with the entry of Staphylococcus aureus.

066/BI/2026 is for a physicist, engineer or computer scientist. You will build a smart microscope that spots infection events in live cells with neural networks, fixes the sample at that moment through NanoJ-Fluidics and images the same cell at about 20 nm resolution.

Applications close on 27 October 2026. Eligibility, the application documents and links to both calls are on our recruitment page.