System Biology Fellowship

Open call for Applications for Research Fellowships in Systems, Cell and Molecular Biology

The Systems Biology Program – is a Fellowship for young scientists – a support (not less than 600 000 RUR per year) of research projects with annual prolongation for up to three years.
The program is held with a generous support from Philip Morris International (PMI) affiliates in Russia.
Deadline for submission of the Applications – February 14th 2020
The winners will be announced in May 2020

What is the Fellowship?

The Systems Biology Program is a support in a form of Fellowship (not less than 600 000 RUR per year) of young scientists’ research with annual prolongation for up to three years.

The Fellowship is aimed to stimulate Russian research in systems, molecular and cell biology and to minimize bureaucratic load on the Fellows.

The Systems Biology Fellows are to submit only annual scientific reports and to participate in Skoltech seminars once or twice a year with short reports or posters.

The main evaluation criteria are articles in peer-reviewed journals or conferences reports.

The final three-year research report is hosted by PMI in Neuchatel, Switzerland

The program is hosted by Skoltech with a generous support from Philip Morris Sales and Marketing.
The results of the first Five completed Projects could be found here
The 2018 Fellows and their Projects could be found here
The 2017 Fellows and their Projects could be found here

Who can apply

A young scientist (35 years or younger), having at least 2 publications (in international peer-reviewed scientific journals with an impact factor no less than 2.0, with at least one such publication with primary (first or last) authorship), working in Russian Scientific Institution.

Our Winners

You can find presentations with current results via links below

2020

Alexey Gurevich (St. Petersburg State University) "Integration of genomics and metabolomics data for discovery of small natural products"
Maria Andrianova (Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology) "Mechanistic model of mutation accumulation based on differential kinetics of DNA repair"
Yury Barbitoff (St. Petersburg State University) "Investigation of the genetic architecture of human traits on the phenome scale"
Aleksey Agapov (Institute of Molecular Genetics, Russian Academy of Science) "Transcriptional interference by RNA-guided DNA-binding proteins"
Anna Shiriaeva (Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology/ St. Petersburg Branch of
Vavilov Institute of General Genetics,
Russian Academy of Science) "High-throughput analysis of short DNA fragments generated in vivo in Escherichia coli and Saccharomyces cerevisiae"

2019

Konstantin Zaitsev (ITMO University) “Identification and separation of sources of transcriptional vatriability in single-cell RNA-seq data”
Sofya Kasatskaya (Shemyakin-Ovchinnikov Institute of Bioorganic Chemistry Russian Academy of Sciences, Department of Genomics of Adaptive Immunity) “Origin of helper T cell diversity in human immunity: the study of TCR repertoires”
Daria Artamonova (Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology) "Investigation of T. thermophilus Type III CRISPR-Cas mediated bacterial defense mechanisms”
Alexandr Artyuhov (Pirogov Russian National Research Medical University) "Direct reprogramming of human skin fibroblasts into insulin-producing cells using CRISPR/dCas9- SunTag-VP64 effector epigenome editing systems"
Evgeny Klimuk (RAS Institute of Molecular Genetics) “Rational design of chimeric portal proteins of viruses”

2018

Aleksandra Galitsyna from Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology with the project “Interpretable model for chromatin interaction probability prediction”
Sergey Shmakov from Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology with the project “Comprehensive characterization of CRISPR-linked genes”
Alexander Gordeev from the Protein Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences with the project “Suppression of reverse transcriptase-driven chimeric cDNA synthesis”
Artem Gureev from Voronezh State University with the project “The study of Mildronate effect on mitochondrial metabolism during physical exercise”
Pavel Kos from Lomonosov Moscow State University with the project “Bi-directional research of chromatin organization in eukaryotic cell nucleus”

2017

Evgeny Egorov from the Shemyakin-Ovchinnikov Institute of Bioorganic Chemistry with the project “Age-associated alterations in the structure of naive TCR repertoire”
Anna Klepikova from Moscow State University, with the project “Gene regulatory networks controlling transition to flowering: evidence from time-series expression data”
Alexey Orlov from Prokhorov General Physics Institute with the project “Development of high-throughput label-free method for experimental protein interactomics”
Alexey Sergushichev from ITMO University with the project “Integrating transcriptomics and metabolomics data for studying dynamic rewiring of the metabolic fluxes during immune response”
Dmitry Svetlichnyy from Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology with the project “Deciphering splicing code using machine learning methods and Next-generation sequencing data”

2016

Ekaterina Khrameeva from Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology with the project “Molecular signatures of normal and aberrant development, aging and longevity in the human brain”
Ilya Vorontsov from the Vavilov Institute of General Genetics with the project “Prioritizing non-coding variants by transcription regulatory potential”
Sergei Ryazansky from the Institute of molecular genetics with the project “Biological role of polymorphism of small RNA expression in Drosophila”
Mikhail Pogorelyy from the Shemyakin-Ovchinnikov Institute of Bioorganic Chemistry with the project “High throughput sequencing of identical twins TCR repertoires after yellow fever vaccination”
Anastasiya Ivanova from the Shemyakin-Ovchinnikov Institute of Bioorganic Chemistry with the project “High throughput study of the genetic network controlled by the secreted regulator of the brain development and regeneration, Ag1, which was lost in higher vertebrates

What areas of research could be supported?

· Systems Biology

· Molecular biology

· Cell biology

· Bioinformatic Algorithms

· Methods development

· Molecular evolution

· Comparative bioinformatics

· Genome-wide studies, Omics

· Big-data analysis

· Genomic medicine

· Metagenomics.

Application

What documents should be submitted for application?

A project proposal
A Letter of Consent for processing personal data
Recommendations from two scientists specializing in the field of research (letters of recommendation from foreign scientists are a plus)
A letter from research supervisor expressing willingness to host the implementation of the Project. For the last 5 (Five) years the research supervisor must have published, as a corresponding author, at least 3 articles in peer-reviewed international scientific journals with an impact factor of no less than 2.0

Applications should be submitted to v.rybko@skolteсh.ru

Procedure

The complete applications will be evaluated by scientists with expertise in the research area

The Expert Panel will review the applications and it’s evaluations. No more than 5 Projects will be chosen for Systems Biology Fellowship in 2020

The Fellows are to submit annual scientific reports. The main evaluation criteria – articles in peer-reviewed journals or conferences participation. The Project’s support is prolonged upon the Reports approval by the experts.

Expert Panel

Systems Biology Program Research Coordinators

Fazoil Ataullakhanov

Scientific Head of the Center for Theoretical Problems of Physico-Chemical Pharmacology, National Academy of Sciences

Director of the Department of Biophysics and Systems Biology, Dmitry Rogachev Federal Research Center of Pediatric Haematology, Oncology, and Immunology