PhD Candidate in Cancer Systems Biology

Would you like to contribute to expanding our knowledge of the molecular interactions within a cancer cell? As a PhD Candidate, you will broaden our understanding of disease mechanisms in cancer and our ability to design effective therapies. This way, you help us improve the prevention, detection and treatment of cancer.

Cancer is a group of complex diseases frequently exhibiting deregulated gene expression and metabolism. This complexity resides in both the large number of molecules that are involved (transcripts, proteins, metabolites, and so on), and in the intricate interactions that these molecules can have with each other. A significant challenge in the area of cancer research today is that much of these interactions are yet unknown.

As a PhD candidate, you will contribute to the expansion of this knowledge, broadening our understanding of disease mechanisms in cancer and our ability to design effective therapies. The research in our lab includes both experimental (‘wet-lab’) and theoretical (‘dry-lab’) components. You will have the opportunity to: design and conduct a range of experiments in 2D and 3D tissue culture using breast cancer cell lines; analyse transcriptomics, proteomics, metabolomics, and fluxomics data; build and finetune quantitative models of gene expression, metabolism, and their interactions; and computationally simulate cancer cell behavior to develop novel theoretical viewpoints. You will gain a strong foundation in the molecular and systems biology of cancer cells, state-of-the-art omics technologies, and computational approaches to integrate multi-omics ‘big data’.

You will be working in an interactive and multidisciplinary environment in the Molecular Developmental Biology group at RIMLS, under the supervision of Dr Rosemary Yu . As part of your PhD training, you will assist in one or two courses a year and  supervise BSc and MSc students within the context of your project.