The objective of this position is to recruit a PhD candidate with a competitive CV to apply its own fellowship to cover its own salary. The PhD will enrol the Bioengineering Doctoral program at Universitat Ramon Llull. The successful candidate will be based at IQS-School of Engineering, an internationally renowned research Institution in the field of Chemistry and Biosciences. THE PROJECT Engineering photosynthetic microalgae as a green cell platform for the sustainable production of added-value bioproducts. Microalgae are unicellular photosynthetic organisms that are emerging as important players in industrial biotechnology. They have several advantages such as rapid growth, reduced water use, no need for arable land, and often GRAS status, so their role in the bioeconomy is increasing. Among them, Chlamydomonas reinhardtii has become a reference model for chloroplast engineering, as its plastome enables targeted genome modification and high recombinant protein expression. This PhD project aims to apply synthetic biology and bioprocess engineering principles to develop a platform based on the chloroplast of green microalgae as a chassis to produce valuable biocompounds. The PhD candidate can join one of the two ongoing research lines: (i) Expanding the Modular Cloning Mocloro toolkit previously published by our group and developing regulatable gene expression systems for advanced chloroplast genome engineering. (ii) Bioprocess engineering of rhamnolipid biosurfactant production in microalgae chloroplast. Rhamnolipids are valuable biosurfactants with applications in industry, cosmetics, pharmaceutics, and agriculture. We have previously produced microalgae strains that produce the lipid rhamnolipid precursors HAA and the PhD work is intended to complete the pathway for mono-rhamnolipid biosynthesis in the chloroplast and optimize its production at bioreactor scale. More information at: CONDITIONS Type of workday: 9 AM - 6 PM. Start date: as soon as possible. Contract duration: 3 years (subjected to fellowship obtention). #J-18808-Ljbffr