UCL Institute of Neurology

Department of Neurodegenerative Disease

Department of Clinical & Experimental Epilepsy

Three Year PhD CASE industrial-collaboration PhD studentship at the UCL Institute of Neurology supported by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council and GSK. The project aim is to establish Magnetic Resonance Imaging biomarkers for application in trials of new treatments in neuromuscular diseases, with a focus on automated quantification http://www.ucl.ac.uk/neuromuscular-mri. The studentship would suit an individual with a first degree in physics, medical physics or computer science. The work will be undertaken in conjunction with the MRC Centre for Neuromuscular Diseases, and will involve periods of industrial placement with GSK. 

Successful applicants will be awarded an annual stipend, and their tuition fees will be paid for them, at the Home/EU fee rate.
Please address informal enquiries to Dr John Thornton; john.thornton@ucl.ac.uk

8 studentships available

Research Area/ Project Title: Building capacity in UK clinical MEG research      
Location: School of Psychology, Cardiff University (Initial recruitment)
Potential locations: Aston, Cambridge, Cardiff, Glasgow, Nottingham, Oxford, UCL, York      
Expected Start Date: 1st October 2013 (initial cohort)      
Duration: 3 Years      
Deadline for Application: 3rd May 2012 (5pm).      

Description of Research Opportunity:
The MRC (60%) and EPSRC (40%) recently awarded the UK MEG community a partnership grant of £1.3M to build clinical research capacity in Magnetoencephalography (MEG). The partnership, led by Cardiff University, includes all 8 universities with current MEG laboratories: Aston, Cambridge (MRC-CBSU), Cardiff, Glasgow, Nottingham, Oxford, University College London (UCL) and York.

The partnership aims to drive forward the field of MEG, both by increasing scientific networking amongst the partners, as well as collaborative research in methodology and clinical applications. As part of this, an MRC Doctoral Training Grant (DTG) was awarded that funds a cohort of eight PhD students to work on collaborative research programmes between two or more of the partner sites. It is anticipated that the first four students will be appointed in 2013 and the second four in 2014, but this could change depending on the quality of the students who apply in the initial round.

We are seeking excellent candidates for a range of PhD projects all of which are related to clinical applications of MEG and, potentially, its multimodal combination with other technologies.

The proposed projects can be methods or applications focused and hence applicants will be considered from any relevant scientific discipline, including those from Psychology, Biosciences, Neuroscience, Physics, Engineering or similar.

All students will initially be recruited to Cardiff, but due to the nature of the partnership, the project offered to a student will be collaborative between any two or more of the partner universities. The final location of the student will hence depend on the balance of work and the location of the supervisors and is a topic that can be discussed at interview. There are significant funds earmarked for each student to facilitate travel and accommodation between sites.

One major advantage of this programme is that the Partners will provide integrated training of the cohort throughout the studentships. This is because the Partnership grant provides significant funds for research training and interaction, including bringing in international speakers and a yearly MEG-UK conference.

The precise details of the projects are not yet finalised for all 8 places, but priority will be given to projects that match the key aims of the partnership, namely:

1)    Developing new multimodal analysis and acquisition methods for using MEG in clinical applications, and deploying these methods to multiple sites.
2)    Larger normative data collection projects across the age-ranges that combine MEG data across sites using novel analysis and bioinformatics approaches to store and query this data.
3)    Projects targeting specific clinical application areas, particularly psychiatric conditions such as Schizophrenia and neurological diseases such as Epilepsy that are well suited to study by MEG.

In addition to MEG, potential methodologies include MRS, fMRI, DTI, TMS, behavioural studies of healthy and clinical cohorts, computational modelling and genetics.

Supervisors:
Students will have at least two co-supervisors, one at each partner site. The potential supervisor pool is large across all eight groups, encompassing all researchers using MEG, but mainly will come from the principal investigators at each site, namely:

Aston: Prof. Paul Furlong and Prof. Ian Holliday
Cambridge (MRC-CBSU): Prof. Rik Henson and Prof. Yury Shtyrov
Cardiff: Prof. Krish Singh and Dr Khalid Hamandi
Glasgow: Prof. Joachim Gross and Dr Klaus Kessler
Nottingham: Dr Matt Brookes and Prof. Peter Morris
Oxford: Prof. Kia Nobre and Dr Mark Woolrich
UCL: Dr Gareth Barnes and Dr Vladimir Litvak
York: Prof. Gary Green

Projects:

The following are a non-exhaustive sample of those on offer - other projects may be offered depending on the interests of the candidate, as long as the proposed scientific programme fits the aims of the Partnership.

The MRC Centre for Neuromuscular Diseases is a partnership between the UCL Institutes of Neurology and Child Health, and Newcastle University, and is a recognised centre of excellence for clinical research training and education in neuromuscular diseases.

The Leonard Wolfson Experimental Neurology Centre is launching an exciting Clinical Fellowship and four year PhD programme in neurodegeneration research. This degree will provide an unrivalled opportunity to participate in cutting-edge research under the supervision of world-class basic science and clinical researchers. We are inviting highly motivated students, interested in using interdisciplinary approaches to address a wide variety of questions in neurodegeneration research, and advance our understanding and treatment of neurodegenerative disease (NDD) to apply for these programmes. The PhD programme is aimed at graduates with a strong interest in multidisciplinary research and applications are invited from students with a background in the biological, physical, and chemical sciences. For the Clinical Fellowships, candidates should demonstrate not just an interest in neurodegeneration research but a clear intention to pursue a career in academic clinical research.

Applications are invited for a 3 year PhD research studentship funded by the Multiple Sclerosis Society and available now. The position is in the Department of Neuroinflammation at the UCL Institute of Neurology: this department includes both basic and clinical research in neuroinflammatory demyelinating disease, such as occurs in multiple sclerosis.