This portfolio showcases a range of PhD project outlines available for the 2026/27 academic year at GOS Institute of Child Health.
Projects are grouped by research department and reflect the breadth of child health research at UCL.
Genetics and Genomic Medicine
- Towards personalised medicine for rare inherited brain diseases
- Investigating the role of ciliary genes in hypothalamic development and neuroendocrine systems
- Stem cell models to evaluate novel therapeutics for airway ciliopathies
- Ciliary programming of fibrotic disease responses
- Investigating pluripotency in human primordial germ cells
- Investigating the genetic basis of hypospadias
- Epigenetic modifiers of a Mendelian disease and implications for gene therapy
Developmental Biology and Cancer
- Novel therapies for inherited childhood metabolic disease
- Exploring lymphatic-immune interactions in development using 3D imaging and spatial transcriptomics
- Prenatal gene therapy for alpha thalassemia using virus like particles
- Using mini stomach models to study rare childhood gastric diseases
- Impact of genetic defects in folate metabolism on embryonic development and congenital anomalies
- Isolation, profiling and culture of rare cell populations from the human amniotic fluid
- How Trisomy 21 shapes the brain and shields it against solid cancers
- Understanding the cellular and genetic development of childhood epilepsy
- Developing a bioengineered human oesophagus: advancing towards clinical application
- Making childhood brain tumours more treatable with dual immunotherapy strategies
- Stealth-engineered cell therapy for autoimmune disease in the kidney
Infection, Immunity, and Inflammation
- Investigating the role of pharmacogenomics in optimising paediatric medical therapy
- Using advanced genetic sequencing techniques
- Gene therapy to correct immune defects in children with mevalonate kinase deficiency
Developmental Neurosciences
- Precision gene regulation as a novel therapeutic approach for neurodevelopmental disorders
- CRISPRdx: A rapid, cost-efficient AI platform for point-of-care paediatric genomic diagnosis
- AI tools for linking imaging, epilepsy and neurodevelopment in Tuberous Sclerosis Complex
- Characterisation and automatic classification of different structural causes of epilepsy
- A novel neuroimaging method to guide surgery in paediatric epilepsy
- Closing the loop: adaptive deep brain stimulation to optimise seizure control in childhood epilepsy
- Individualised prediction of seizure and cognitive outcomes in children with epilepsy with diffusion
- fMRI language mapping in multilingual children undergoing brain surgery
- Identification of EEG biomarker for genetic early onset epilepsy syndromes
- Understanding and exploiting stem cell regenerative potential in muscle health and disease
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