A PhD student position is available in the laboratory of V Anne Smith, University of St Andrews

February 2, 2008

Sponsored Links

Career Blog

Online Distance Learning Courses for International Students

Google Internships for International Students

A PhD student position is available in the laboratory of V Anne Smith
at the University of St Andrews. Please visit
http://biology.st-andrews.ac.uk/vannesmithlab/ for more information
on the lab, and feel free to contact me at
anne.smith@st-andrews.ac.uk with questions.

A pdf of the below PhD advertisement is downloadable from:

http://biology.st-andrews.ac.uk/vannesmithlab/SULSA2008.pdf

SULSA Prize PhD Studentship in Systems Biology

Gene and protein networks related to breast cancer

Systems biology is a growing area, combining modelling and
computational analysis with biological experimentation. It enables us
to understand biological processes on a broad-scale like never
before: for example, instead of analysing a gene or its protein in
isolation, we now analyse entire networks. Such systems level
understanding impacts research in multiple areas, including cancer
biology.

In this studentship, you will examine gene and protein regulatory
networks related to breast cancer. You will both build computational
models and perform biological experiments. The project will lever two
systems biology methods-dynamical systems modelling (DSM) of large
cellular networks and Bayesian network (BN) inference of network
structure-to produce data-driven models of gene and protein
regulation networks relevant to breast cancer. DSM handles well the
sparsity of data; however, networks are manually described and
uniqueness is difficult to verify. BNs complement this by recovering
network structure de novo from data and predicting several
alternative structures; however, they have high data demands. You
will use these two complementary methods to suggest structures
consistent with the data and to identify the key experiments required
to discriminate between alternative solutions.

You will be based at St Andrews University and jointly supervised by
Dr V Anne Smith (St Andrews), Prof John W Crawford (Abertay), and
Prof David J Harrison (Edinburgh). Dr Smith will provide expertise on
BNs; Prof Crawford and Prof Harrsion will provide expertise on DSM
and biological experimentation respectively. As a SULSA Student, you
will also have the opportunity to engage in the SULSA (Scottish
Universities Life Science Alliance) community across Scotland,
including meetings with other SULSA Students. For more details,
please contact anne.smith@st-andrews.ac.uk and/or visit:

http://biology.st-andrews.ac.uk/vannesmithlab/

Funding by SULSA plus BBSRC or St Andrews Biology: stipend and fees
covered to EU level

–
Dr V Anne Smith
School of Biology
Sir Harold Mitchell Building
University of St Andrews
St Andrews, Fife KY16 9TH
United Kingdom
+44 (0)1334-463368
anne.smith@st-andrews.ac.uk
biology.st-andrews.ac.uk/vannesmithlab/

Scholarship Tags: Anne Smith, available, laboratory, PhD student, Position, University of St Andrews