Dr N Rosenfeld
No more applications being accepted
Funded PhD Project (Students Worldwide)
About the Project
The Rosenfeld lab (http://www.cruk.cam.ac.uk/research-groups/rosenfeld-group) develops next-generation sequencing methods to study cancer genomics using cell-free DNA from blood and other body fluids of cancer patients. These are applied for noninvasive molecular diagnostics and studies of disease evolution. Recent improvements in molecular technologies now allow us to collect unprecedented amounts of sequencing data to study new aspects of the biology of circulating tumour DNA (ctDNA) in body fluids and their implications on cancer dissemination and diagnostics (see Wan et al., “Liquid biopsies come of age: towards implementation of circulating tumour DNA”, Nature Reviews Cancer, 2017).
This is an exciting opportunity to join a multi-disciplinary, translational research group and make an important contribution to an exciting and fast moving field. The successful candidate will develop and apply bioinformatic, data mining and machine learning tools to explore large databases of cancer genomics data accumulated by the Rosenfeld group over recent years. This unique dataset includes longitudinal samples collected from patients across the development of cancer and its evolution in response to treatments. Questions of interest include:
- mechanisms of tumour initiation and evolution, which are reflected in mutational signatures that evolve over time;
- biological properties of cell-free DNA released from tumour cells, which are reflected in the patterns of fragment localisation;
- genomics of cancer, its microenvironment and the immune responses, reflected by ctDNA and additional types of circulating nucleic acids;
- improvements to molecular diagnostic tools, for detection of early cancers and residual disease, using patterns that will be discovered.
This data will be correlated with biological and clinical information about the patients, including the cancer changes and responses to treatment.
Applicants should have excellent communication and organisational skills to work closely with members of the Rosenfeld group and additional collaborating scientists and clinicians. Whilst a range of backgrounds will be considered, the successful applicant will have a quantitative background and computational skills and will be eager to learn about cancer biology. Ideal skills include:
• A degree in a computational/quantitative discipline or equivalent experience
• Experience in the use of scripting languages (R, python) in a Unix environment
• Experience with machine learning, signal processing or data mining
• Familiarity with statistical analysis of large-scale data sets (data visualisation, multivariate regression, predictive modelling)
• Experience with genomics analysis (processing sequencing data, building reusable, robust bioinformatics tools, data mining genomic databases) would be an advantage
Funding Notes
This studentship is funded by Cancer Research UK and includes full funding for University and College fees and in addition, a stipend of £19,000 per annum, initially for 3 years, with funding for a further year possible as required.
No nationality restrictions apply to this Cancer Research UK funded studentship. Applications are invited from recent graduates or final year undergraduates who hold or expect to gain a first/upper second class degree (or equivalent) in a relevant subject from any recognised university worldwide.
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