PhD studentship opportunities in Environment and Health

We are pleased to invite applications for 3-year PhD studentships at the MRC Centre for Environment and Health. Studentships will be based at the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics (Imperial College London), and/or at the Environmental Research Group (King’s College London).

MRC Centre for Environment and Health is an internationally recognised centre of excellence for cutting edge multidisciplinary research on the health effects of environmental pollutants and the translation of this knowledge to inform policy development. The Centre is uniquely placed to lead collaborative research projects nationally and internationally, producing high quality research and working with public health agencies to apply the results to improve population health.

A key component of our Centre’s strategic aim and mission is to train and develop the next generation of research and policy leaders in the environment and health arena. Successful candidates will be supported by the Centre’s training programme and will be provided with bespoke research training to ensure they are equipped with the appropriate skills and experience to become first class researchers.

Studentships include tuition fees and a minimum stipend of £17,009 per annum.

The closing date for application is 5 July 2019. Interviews for shortlisted candidates will take place in the second hald of July. Successful candidates are expected to start their studentships by October 2019.

Eligibility

Applicants should have, or expect to receive, a first or upper second class honours degree or equivalent in a relevant life science or quantitative science subject and have strong statistical and computational skills.

UK students and EU nationals who lived in the UK for the past three years are eligible. UK and EU nationals who have not been “ordinarily resident” in the UK for the past 3 years or Non-EU international students may apply but should consult the MRC's guidelines for "Recruitment of international students" to determine whether they would be eligible for the full or a partial award.

Research areas and projects

Applicants are not expected to have confirmed a PhD supervisor or project before application, but a clear idea of the area they wish to pursue and how it fits with the Centre’s remit will be beneficial for their personal statement. Current areas of specific interest in the Centre include three main themes and two cross cutting areas:

• Environmental Exposures (incl. air pollution, noise, non-ionising radiation)
• Molecular Signatures and Disease Pathways (incl. exposome, biomarkers and omics)
• Healthy Cities, Healthy People (incl. urban environment, socioeconomic inequalities and health)
• Biostatistics and Data Science (incl. GIS, surveillance, Bayesian nonparametric models)
• Cohorts and Data Resources (incl. cohorts of children and adolescents, occupational cohorts)

The Centre’s research is multidisciplinary bringing together skills and expertise in the following areas:

• Clinicians (cardiovascular disease, cancer, genetic disease)
• Epidemiologists (e.g. environmental epidemiology and exposure assessment)
• Statisticians (e.g. modelling and computational biology)
• Geographers (e.g. spatial epidemiology and small area studies)
• Biologists and geneticists (e.g. molecular and genetic epidemiology)
• Toxicologists (e.g. chemistry, biomarkers, metabolic profiling)

For more information on the Centre’s research programmes and on potential supervisors and their areas of interest please see the Centre's website.

For more information and instructions on how to apply, or to discuss specific ideas falling within the scope of the research conducted at the Centre and projects of particular interest to the Centre’s principal investigators please contact the Centre’s Scientific Manager, Dr Eduardo Seleiro (e.seleiro@imperial.ac.uk).