Cambridge MRC DTP – PhD Studentships

1 fully funded PhD studentship in Artificial Intelligence and 2 fully funded PhD studentships in Data Science commencing October 2018

An exciting opportunity has arisen to offer 3 MRC DTP – Industrial Strategy PhD studentships in Data Science and Artificial Intelligence at the University of Cambridge.

Projects will be within the three broad themes:

• Therapeutic target prioritisation through systems genomics

Objective: To transform understanding of shared molecular origins of diverse conditions in causal analyses that cut across multiple types of molecular data and electronic health records.

• Creating a “digital life-course” for devastating disorders

Objective: To empower precision medicine of important development conditions through integration of large-scale genomic data with NHS clinical data.

• Using imaging indicators to elucidate disease aetiology

Objective: To develop machine learning methods to capture and mobilise imaging data to advance understanding of the aetiology of diseases

Research environment

The PhD students will join research activities within the new Cambridge Substantive Site of Health Data Research UK (HDR-UK), a partnership of closely-collaborating organisations including the University of Cambridge, Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute (WTSI) and EMBL-European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI).  Our aim is to employ data science / artificial intelligence approaches across multi-dimensional studies that combine electronic health records and extensive biomedical data (eg, “expressed genome”, microbiome, imaging) in patient and population cohorts anchored in genomics (currently: > 150,000 participants; 5-10 year plan: >1M participants) to achieve new causal insights into biology and disease. Students will tackle strategic questions of translational importance, typically through trilateral supervision by an applied/clinical scientist  (eg, from Department of Public Health and Primary Care, Department of Medicine, Human Genetics Department, Clinical Neuroscience Unit, Department of Paediatrics), a data scientist (eg, from MRC Biostatistics Unit, MRC Epidemiology Unit, EPSRC Cambridge Centre in Maths/Clinical Imaging, University Statistical Laboratory, EMBL-EBI and WTSI) and an industry scientist (eg, from Microsoft Research, AstraZeneca, GlaxoSmithKline, Open Targets and Illumina).

Students will have access to world-leading data collections and will benefit from computing facilities such as the “Peta-5 system”, the UK’s largest university supercomputer and facilities at WTSI and EMBL-EBI (one of the largest coordinated set of computing assets to the life sciences in the world).

In addition to excellent research facilities MRC DTP students will have access to a wide variety of training and Researcher Development activities offered through the Graduate School of Life Sciences as well as the MRC Flexible Supplement providing added funding to support Skills and Partnership Training.

The closing date for applications is 12 noon on Thursday 10th May 2018. Applications should be submitted as soon as possible and no later than the closing date.

Interviews will be held Friday 25th May 2018.