Professor Juan Diego Ibáñez-Álamo, from the Department of Zoology at the University of Granada, welcomes postdoctoral candidates interested in applying for a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellowship (MSCA-PF) in 2023 at this University. Please note that applicants must comply with the Mobility Rule (for more information about the 2023 call, please consult:(http://sl.ugr.es/0d7F).

Brief description of the institution:

The University of Granada (UGR) was founded in 1531 and is one of the largest and most important universities in Spain. With over 51,000 undergraduate and postgraduate students and almost 3,000 members of staff, the UGR offers over 90 undergraduate degrees, 160 master’s degrees (8 of which are international double degrees) and 28 doctoral programmes via its 124 departments and nearly 50 centers. Accordingly, the UGR offers one of the most extensive and diverse ranges of higher education programmes in Spain.

The UGR has been awarded with the "Human Resources Excellence in Research (HRS4R)", which reflects the institution’s commitment to continuously improving its human resource policies in line with the European Charter for Researchers and the Code of Conduct for the Recruitment of Researchers. The UGR is also internationally renowned for its excellence in diverse research fields and ranked among the top Spanish universities in a variety of ranking criteria, such as national R&D projects, fellowships awarded, publications, and international funding.

The UGR is one of the few Spanish Universities listed in the Shanghai Top 500 ranking - Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU). The 2022 edition of the ARWU places the UGR in 201-300th position in the world and as the 2-5 highest ranked universities in Spain (http://sl.ugr.es/0d7D), reaffirming its position as an institution at the forefront of national and international research. The UGR stands out in the specialties of Library & Information Science (position 38); Food Science & Technology (30) and Hospitality & Tourism Management (51-75), according to the latest edition of this prestigious ranking by specialties (http://sl.ugr.es/0bSp). A little lower in the ranking, the UGR also stands out in Mathematics (76-100).

Additionally, the UGR has 9 researchers who are at the top of the Highly Cited Researchers (HCR) list (http://sl.ugr.es/0d7E), most of these related to the area of Computer Science. It is also well recognized for its web presence (http://sl.ugr.es/0a6i), being positioned at 42th place in the top 200 Universities in Europe.

Internationally, the University of Granada is firmly committed to its participation in the calls of the Framework Programme of the European Union. For the duration of the last Framework Programme, Horizon 2020, the UGR obtained a total 120 projects with a total funding of around 29,4 million euros.  For the current Framework Programme, Horizon Europe, the UGR has obtained 38 projects, so far, with total funding around 11 € million.

Brief description of the Centre/Research Group:

Dr. J.D. Ibáñez-Álamo is member of the Animal Behaviour and Ecology group, which is formed by 5 permanent, 1 MSCA fellow and 6 PhD students. In the years 2016-2022, the group secured a total of 8 research projects (1.2M€) from different national and international sources. The scientific output of these 6 years is 95 scientific papers in JCR journals. In addition, 1 book (Oxford University Press) and 6 book chapters were published and 23 contributions to international conferences were presented by members of the group. A total of 4 PhD and 16 MSc theses were successfully supervised in different national and international universities.

This multidisciplinary group is focused in the study of animal interactions and their evolution. It has three main research lines. Dr. M. Soler (H-index 54, 9846 citations) leads the research in parent-offspring interactions and brood parasitism. His studies on animal behavior are classic examples in national and international teaching books. Dr. M. Martín-Vivaldi (H-index 31, 2752 citations) and Dr. Magdalena Ruiz-Rodríguez (H-index 23, 1620 citations) lead the research in animal-microbes interactions, a research frontier in current Biology. Their multidisciplinary studies with the Eurasian Hoopoe and its ecological and evolutionary interactions with microbes have become classic examples of bird-microbes interactions. Dr. T. Perez-Contreras (H-index 26, 1959 citations) leads the research in birds-insects interactions, with a special focus on animal behavior. Dr. J.D. Ibáñez-Álamo (H-index 28, 3633 citations) leads the research in human-nature interactions, particularly in urban ecology.

Project description:

Dr. J.D. Ibáñez-Álamo investigates on animal interactions. Currently, his main research line focuses on human-nature interactions, particularly in the context of urban ecology. He investigates three main aspects within this topic: (1) biodiversity effects (Ibáñez-Álamo et al. 2017 Glob. Chang. Biol.; Ibáñez-Álamo et al. 2020a STOTEN); (2) ecophysiological effects (Ibáñez-Álamo et al. 2018 Biol. Lett.; Ibáñez-Álamo et al. 2020b STOTEN); and (3) behavioral changes (Ibáñez-Álamo & Soler 2010 Biol. J. Linn. Soc.; Jagiello et al. 2023 Philos. Trans. R. Soc. B). He explores these questions using different scales, from local to global, and approaches that includes experiments, observational and comparative (multispecific) analyses. He uses birds as his main model system, but also works with urban insects too (MSCA fellow under his supervision; Arjona et al. 2023 Front. Ecol. Evol.). Most of his studies have been carried out in Europe, but he is increasingly becoming interested in cities from tropical regions, and consequently a big part of his current studies focuses now on these areas (e.g. Awoyemi & Ibáñez-Álamo 2023 Landsc. Urban Plan.). In addition to human-nature interactions, he also works with other types of intraspecific (parent-offspring; Ibáñez-Álamo et al. 2018 Anim. Behav.) and interspecific animal interactions (predator-prey, brood parasitism and host-microbes –Ibáñez-Álamo et al. 2015 J. Ornithol.; Ibáñez-Álamo et al. 2019 Plos One; van Veelen et al. 2023 BMC microbiology–), most of them having the nests of birds as focal system (e.g. nest sanitation, nest design and nest predation). He is convinced that collaborative work allows responding many more interesting questions than working alone, therefore he carries out most of his studies with multiple international collaborators.

Research Area:

☒ Environment and Geosciences (ENV)

☒ Life Sciences (LIFE)

For a correct evaluation of your candidature, please send the documents below to Professor Juan Diego Ibáñez-Álamo, email: jia@ugr.es

• CV
• Letter of recommendation (optional)