As a student lab technician, you will provide hands-on support to our PhD student and PI across the following tasks:
- **Cell culture maintenance** — routine passaging, monitoring, and quality control of human mesenchymal stem cell lines under standard and quiescence-inducing conditions (methylcellulose medium, polyacrylamide substrates)
- **Fluorescence microscopy** — preparation of samples for immunofluorescence staining and imaging of histone variants and cell cycle markers
- **Nucleic acid work** — DNA and RNA extraction from cell lines, quantification (Nanodrop/Qubit), quality assessment (gel electrophoresis, Bioanalyzer), and support with library preparation for long-read Oxford Nanopore sequencing (DiMeLo-Seq)
- **Basic molecular assays** — support with qPCR, Western blot, alkaline phosphatase (ALP) activity assays, and BrdU proliferation assays
- **General lab support** — ordering and managing consumables, preparing reagents and buffers, maintaining lab organisation and safety standards
You will work approximately **20 hours per week** and will be directly supervised by the PI (Prof. Pavlo Lutsik) and/or the project PhD student.
What do we offer?
- A paid student job contract under Belgian student employment regulations (~20 hrs/week, June 15 – September 30)
- Immersive experience in a cutting-edge epigenomics research lab, with exposure to technologies such as Oxford Nanopore long-read sequencing and chromatin profiling
- Training and mentoring from an experienced research team
- The opportunity to contribute to a funded project at the forefront of cancer epigenetics
- A dynamic, international and collaborative working environment at KU Leuven's Department of Oncology (campus Gasthuisberg)
