[Neuroinfo] Three PhD projects in modelling brain diseases and brain development at Newcastle University

[Marcus Kaiser]

Dear all,

we are currently advertising the following three 4-year PhD positions for
our lab with application deadlines early next year.

The funding covers living expenses and UK/EU fees over four years and,
using overseas research studentships, potentially also the higher fees for
non-EU applicants.

Students are chosen in competition with students who choose projects in
other fields, which means that we would particularly encourage strong
applicants with very good academic marks and previous research experience
to apply.

Please follow the links below for more information.


*Newcastle-DTA PhD studentships*

(1) Building brains: Which developmental pathways lead to better
performance in information processing?
<http://www.ncl.ac.uk/sage/study/postgrad/dta/documents/2016-Kaiser-122.pdf>
(School:
Computing Science Ref: DTA122)

Within this project, a student will help to develop detailed simulations of
brain network development. In addition, the student will test the
performance of the grown networks on visual tasks. Through this, we
will investigate (a) how developmental mechanisms are linked to the
resulting topology and (b) how the resulting network is linked to
processing performance. As a result, we will get a better understanding how
changes during development are linked to brain architecture and how they
can lead to cognitive deficits.

Supervisors: Prof. Marcus Kaiser, Dr Gavin Clowry, and Dr Roman Bauer


(2) Predicting patient outcomes following traumatic brain injury
<http://www.ncl.ac.uk/sage/study/postgrad/dta/documents/2016-Kaiser-123.pdf>
(School:
Computing Science Ref: DTA123)

In this study we will investigate the impact of simulated brain lesions
using human brain connectivity data and computer simulations. We shall aim
to produce biomarkers for patient outcomes. These techniques may hive wider
applications in stroke, multiple sclerosis and ageing.

Supervisors: Prof. Marcus Kaiser and Dr Peter Taylor

Please *apply by 22 January* at
http://www.ncl.ac.uk/sage/study/postgrad/dta/


*Newcastle-Singapore PhD studentships*

(3) Improving surgery in focal epilepsy using computational modelling
<http://www.ncl.ac.uk/sage/study/postgrad/singapore/documents/Improvingsurgeryinfocalepilepsyusingcomputationalmodelling.pdf>(School:
Computing Science Ref: NSS12)

In this project we shall attempt to predict which patients will be seizure
free after surgery using human brain connectivity information of patients.
For those patients predicted to be not seizure free we shall
suggest alternative strategies for surgery. See also our recent article in
PLOS CB:
http://www.ploscompbiol.org/article/metrics/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pcbi.1004642

Supervisors: Dr. Peter Taylor, Prof. Marcus Kaiser, and Asst. Prof. Justin
Dauwels (NTU, Singapore). The student will be based at Newcastle but also
visit Singapore

Please *apply by 26 February* at
http://www.ncl.ac.uk/sage/study/postgrad/singapore/


*Research Environment*

There are currently 12 faculty members with a link to neuroinformatics and
computational neuroscience. Using computational models for clinical
applications is a strong interest of our group (see
http://neuroinformatics.ncl.ac.uk/ for an overview). Students will be based
in the School of Computing Science, which was ranked #9 for research and #1
for impact in the recent UK Research Excellence Framework evaluation, as
part of the ICOS Group (http://ico2s.org/ ). They will also be affiliated
with the Institute of Neuroscience which integrates more than 100 principal
investigators across medicine, psychology, computer science, and
engineering and which was ranked #9 overall and #5 for impact in the UK (
http://www.ncl.ac.uk/ion/).

Newcastle University, with 20,000 students, lies in the city of
Newcastle-upon-Tyne -- an area in the North-East of England with around one
million inhabitants. The university is at the centre of Newcastle which
itself is on the main train-line between London and Edinburgh, 20 minutes
away from both the airport and the sand beach by public transport (
http://www.ncl.ac.uk/about/visit/city/ ).

We also offer a one-year master programme in Computational Neuroscience and
Neuroinformatics (http://www.ncl.ac.uk/computing/study/postgrad/taught/5199/ )
which is now accepting applications.


Best,
  Marcus

--

Marcus Kaiser, Ph.D.   @ConnectomeLab <https://twitter.com/ConnectomeLab>
Professor in Neuroinformatics
Interdisciplinary Computing and Complex Biosystems (ICOS) Research Group
School of Computing Science
Newcastle University
Claremont Tower
Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 7RU, UK

Lab website:
http://www.dynamic-connectome.org/

Neuroinformatics at Newcastle:
http://neuroinformatics.ncl.ac.uk
/
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