The Genetic Epidemiology group at the University of Leicester has a three-year Medical Research Council Capacity-building PhD studentship to start in the 2008/9 academic year. The studentship is available only to candidates who can demonstrate a relevant connection to the United Kingdom. The project will focus on the design and analytical approaches to large scale genetic association studies. A brief outline of the project is given at the end of this advertisement.
We are seeking individuals either with strong statistics or mathematics backgrounds with an interest in developing methodology for biological applications, or individuals with a strong biological background and ideally an MSc in statistics, quantitative genetics or genetic epidemiology.
The studentship will be under the supervision of Dr. Martin Tobin and Professor Paul Burton (Departments of Health Sciences and Genetics) and will involve collaboration with colleagues in and outside Leicester, thus ensuring a rich research environment at the interface of statistics, medicine and biology. Genetic epidemiology is currently a rapidly growing field with excellent postdoctoral employment opportunities. Further information can be obtained by contacting either Martin Tobin ([log in to unmask]) or Paul Burton ([log in to unmask]).
The studentships cover full fees for UK/EU students, a research training support grant and conference allowance, together with a recruitment premium and a maintenance stipend at MRC rates (approximately £12,600 p.a. - see http://www.mrc.ac.uk/ for further information).
Applicants should send a statement of interest (no more than 1 page) and a CV with details of two referees to:
Dr Martin Tobin,
MRC Clinician Scientist Fellow
Genetic Epidemiology Group,
Departments of Health Sciences & Genetics,
2nd Floor,
Adrian Building,
University of Leicester,
University Road,
Leicester LE1 7RH
The closing date for applications is Tuesday 5th February 2008.
Project outline
There has been a rapid growth in the number and scale of genome-wide association studies for a range of common complex diseases, such as coronary heart disease, type 1 and type 2 diabetes and rheumatoid arthritis. Such studies should lead to tangible health benefits through improved understanding of the biological pathways that underlie disease causation, progression and treatment. The designs of such studies continue to evolve to reflect improving knowledge of different types of variation in the human genome, the inter-relationship between different variants in the genome, improving genotyping technologies and large scale collaborative efforts. In this context, it is important that design and analytical strategies keep pace with developments to facilitate powerful and robust approaches to these expensive studies. Such studies can lose power when appropriate account is not taken of realistic sources of measurement error. This project will focus on the development, testing and application of approaches to maximize the statistical power in the realistic setting in which we do not have perfect measures of the genetic variants of interest in all studied participants. There will be opportunities to extend the work to include multi-phased designs and to motivate and illustrate the approaches using data from recent large genome-wide studies.
Nuala A. Sheehan,
Reader in Statistical Genetics,
University of Leicester,
Department of Health Sciences and Department of Genetics,
2nd Floor Adrian Building,
University Road,
Leicester LE1 7RH, UK
Tel: +44 (0)116 2297271
Fax: +44 (0)116 2297250
Email: [log in to unmask]
https://swww2.le.ac.uk/Members/nas11
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