CSIRO Winanga-y Postdoctoral Fellowship in Reproductive Biology and Genome Engineering in Mammals

• Do you have a PhD in molecular biology or genetic engineering?
• Keen to work in the field of reproductive biology and genome engineering in mammals?
• Join our Agriculture and Food team for this exciting postdoctoral role

CSIRO Early Research Career (CERC) Postdoctoral Fellowships provide opportunities to scientists and engineers who have completed their doctorate and have less than three years of relevant postdoctoral work experience. These fellowships aim to develop the next generation of future leaders of the innovation system.

We are thrilled to be able to deliver on the commitment we made in our strategy to invest in frontier science with the CSIRO Agriculture & Food Winanga-y Postdoctoral Fellowship scheme. The word Winanga-y (pronounced win-na-gnay) is a cultural asset gifted by the Gomeroi Nation in Myall Vale to CSIRO’s Agriculture and Food Business Unit to name the new Postdoctoral Fellowship Scheme. Winanga-y means to understand, know, remember, and think.

This CERC Fellowship is in the field of reproductive biology and genome engineering in mammals. The broad aim of the project is to develop strategies to control the sex of offspring to improve animal welfare.

The ability to control the sex of animals in agricultural systems holds the promise of dramatically improving animal welfare and increasing production efficiency. Males and females often exhibit significantly different production performances. There is a range of examples where the presence of both males and females in the production system dictates the need for inefficient management practices that may have adverse animal welfare implications. Consequently, the ability to skew the sex ratio of offspring would have a major positive benefit to animal agriculture.

The CERC Fellow will design, develop and implement strategies to improve the control of sex determination in mammals, which could include genetic systems via precise genome engineering and other approaches (e.g. sperm sorting systems). The interest in controlling the sex ratio goes beyond its application in animal agriculture, being also relevant as a pest control mechanism. CSIRO has projects in both areas; the fellow will have the opportunity to interact across groups.