PhD Candidate: Genetic architecture of Internalizing and Functional disorders

Universitair Centrum Psychiatrie

This vacancy for a talented PhD student is available at

the Interdisciplinary Center Psychopathology and Emotion regulation

(ICPE) of the University Medical Center Groningen (UMCG). The ICPE performs high-quality research on common mental disorders at the crossroads of various disciplines, and offers attractive career perspectives for motivated, gifted PhD students who are driven by curiosity and have a strong interest in multidisciplinary research.

The ICPE is part of the University Center of Psychiatry (UCP) of the UMCG. The UCP offers state of the art and innovative treatments to psychiatric patients, and has competitive research programs. The UCP includes about 450 employees who work in psychiatric health care, research, or both. The UCP offers excellent training for psychiatrists, psychologists, and other disciplines. The ICPE collaborates with the department of Internal Medicine (UMCG), in particular the Tertiary referral center for Unexplained complaints, symptoms, and abnormalities.

The study
The 4-year PhD position is funded by the National Institute of Mental Health and is dedicated to the newly established research project “An integrative approach to the etiology of internalizing and functional disorders”. Internalizing and functional disorders are highly comorbid and run strongly in families, but common genetic and environmental pathways are understudied. The project investigates common and unique genetic and environmental risk factors for these disorders in data from 167.729 participants of Lifelines, a longitudinal multigenerational population-based cohort in the Netherlands. This multidisciplinary project combines knowledge and methods from molecular genetics, epidemiology, and psychiatry to investigate causal mechanisms of internalizing and functional disorders.

Within this project, the PhD candidate will focus on common and unique genetic risk factors for internalizing and functional disorders using methods from statistical genetics and/or genetic epidemiology. During the PhD program the student will deepen the knowledge in molecular biology and develop skills in analysis of genome wide association data, i.e. basic genetic statistical analysis, polygenic risk scores, machine learning tools, and causal models (Mendelian Randomization), and in scientific writing and presentation. The student will apply his skills to the dataset of 80.000 samples with GWAS data, and gain a unique international work experience. The PhD candidate will collaborate with other researchers to integrate his/her findings with environmental risk factors to better understand the causes of internalizing and functional disorders.