Postdoctoral Fellowships at CSIRO provide opportunities to scientists and engineers, who have completed their doctorate and have less than three years relevant postdoctoral work experience. These fellowships will help launch their careers, provide experience that will enhance their career prospects, and facilitate the recruitment and development of potential leaders for CSIRO. Postdoctoral Fellows are appointed for up to three years and will work closely with a leading Research Scientist or Engineer in their respective field. Mineral resources contribute significantly to the economic wealth of Australia. However, most of Australia’s easily-found mineral deposits have already been discovered and a dramatic drop in the mineral discovery rate has been observed over the last decade. This sharp decrease in mineral exploration success is related to 80% of the Australian continent being covered by regolith, strongly challenging the use of conventional exploration techniques to identify new exploration targets. In order to minimise the risk, cost and environmental impact of future mineral exploration campaigns, novel biogeochemical tools need to be developed. Subtle concentrations of specific elements present in soils overlying deposits can affect the populations of microbes such as fungi and bacteria that live in the soil. These changes in microbial populations are being investigated as potential surface exploration proxies, but little is known of the link between microbial communities at the surface and the deep biosphere in the subsurface. As the successful candidate, you will seek to provide a greater understanding of the surface and deep biosphere through genomic sequencing of microbial communities found in regolith as well as in fresh drill core material (deep Earth samples) obtained during mining and mineral exploration. You will investigate microbial communities around mineral deposits in order to contribute to the development and use of microbes in future mineral exploration. This project will be undertaken in collaboration with CSIRO Land & Water, Perth and GFZ Potsdam, Germany. Applications close November 12, 2017.