Postdoctoral studies (scholarship) in Molecular Regulation of Skeletal Muscle Adaptation to Exercise Full-time

Postdoctoral Studies in Molecular Regulation of Skeletal Muscle Adaptation to Exercise

We are seeking a highly motivated postdoctoral researcher to join an ambitious research project exploring the molecular mechanisms that regulate skeletal muscle growth, adaptation, and memory following resistance exercise. The successful candidate will work with a unique human dataset and cutting-edge omics approaches to uncover how skeletal muscle responds to training and detraining at the molecular level. This position offers a rare opportunity to combine human physiology, large-scale molecular datasets, and computational analyses to answer fundamental questions about muscle plasticity that are relevant for human performance, rehabilitation, and metabolic health.

The project aims at advancing the biology of human performance and provides opportunities to collaborate with leading researchers in exercise biology, physiology, and computational biology.

Division

The position will be based in the Lanner and von Walden Labs, Karolinska Institutet, located at Biomedicum, Campus Solna, a state-of-the-art research environment in the heart of Stockholm's life science cluster.

Our research focuses on understanding how skeletal muscle adapts to physiological and pathological challenges, including exercise, inflammation, and metabolic disease. We combine human experimental studies, molecular physiology, and advanced omics technologies to uncover mechanisms regulating muscle function and dysfunction.

The successful candidate will join a collaborative and international research environment and contribute to a project within the Wu Tsai Human Performance Alliance focused on identifying the molecular blueprint of skeletal muscle adaptation. The project leverages a world-unique human cohort with extensive physiological phenotyping and more than 600 muscle biopsies collected across acute exercise, training, and detraining time points, enabling unprecedented insights into the temporal dynamics of human muscle adaptation.

The project integrates large-scale RNA sequencing and chromatin accessibility profiling, together with physiological and wearable-derived data on strength, activity, and recovery.

Duties

The postdoctoral researcher will work on a project aimed at understanding how resistance exercise remodels the molecular landscape of human skeletal muscle and how these adaptations are maintained or lost during detraining.

Key responsibilities include:

• Analysis of large-scale bulk RNA sequencing datasets generated from human skeletal muscle biopsies across multiple exercise time points
• Integration and analysis of single-nucleus transcriptomic and chromatin accessibility datasets
• Development of bioinformatic pipelines in R for differential expression, pathway enrichment, and network analyses
• Integration of molecular findings with physiological phenotypes including muscle strength, activity patterns, and recovery data
• Participation in collaborative research within the Wu Tsai Human Performance Alliance network
• Contributing to scientific publications and presenting findings at international conferences

The candidate will play an important role in translating large-scale molecular datasets into biological insights and identifying regulatory networks that govern muscle adaptation and memory.

Entry Requirements

Requirements:

• A PhD in physiology, exercise physiology, molecular biology, bioinformatics, or a related field
• Strong background in skeletal muscle physiology and/or exercise physiology
• Experience with omics datasets (e.g., RNA-seq, single-nucleus or proteomics analyses)
• Strong computational skills and proficiency in R
• Experience working with large datasets and integrative analyses
• Excellent written and oral communication skills in English

Meritorious:

• Experience with human skeletal muscle studies, epigenomic analyses, or computational biology approaches is considered an advantage.

Postdoctoral scholarships may be established for foreign researchers who pursue their merit in Sweden. A foreign researcher is a person living in another country who comes to Sweden with the intention of only staying in Sweden for all or part of their postdoctoral education at KI. Persons who are resident in Sweden and/or have carried out all or part of their academic education at KI or some other educational institution in Sweden cannot be considered for scholarships. The purpose of scholarships for postdoctoral qualification is to promote internationalization and contribute to research qualification after a doctorate or equivalent. A scholarship for carrying out postdoctoral research can be granted for a maximum of two years within a four-year period following the receipt of a doctoral degree or equivalent. To be eligible for a postdoctoral scholarship, the person must have obtained a doctorate, or a foreign degree deemed to be equivalent to a doctorate. Applicants who have not completed a doctorate at the end of the application period may also apply, provided that all requirements for a completed degree are met before the (intended) start date of the post-doctoral education.

What Do We Offer?

A creative and inspiring environment with wide-ranging expertise and interests. Karolinska Institutet is one of the world's leading medical universities. Here, we conduct innovative medical research and provide the largest range of biomedical education in Sweden. At KI, you get to meet researchers working with a wide range of specialisms and methods, giving you ample opportunity to exchange knowledge and experience with the various scientific fields within medicine and health. It is the crossover collaborations, which have pushed KI to where it is today, at the forefront of global research. Several of the people you meet in healthcare are educated at KI. A close relationship with the health care providers is important for creating groundbreaking top quality education and research. Students and employees have free access to our modern gym facilities with trained staff on site.

Location: Solna

Type of Scholarship

The amount is tax free and it is set for twelve months at a time, paid out on a six months basis. In exceptional cases, shorter periods may be acceptable.

Application Process

An application must contain the following documents in English or Swedish:

• A complete curriculum vitae, including date of the thesis defence, title of the thesis, previous academic positions, academic title, current position, academic distinctions, and committee work
• A complete list of publications
• A summary of current work (no more than one page)

The application is to be submitted on the Varbi recruitment system latest 1 April 2026.

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