PhD-student Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Psychology

The aim of this project is to examine the role of epigenetic mechanisms, in particular circulating miRNAs, in the intergenerational transmission of psychiatric risk from parents to offspring. The project is part of a large European-funded consortium, called FAMILY, involving multiple national and international institutions and the analysis of data from human cohorts (from both the general population and high-risk studies of offspring with a parent suffering from mental illness). The PhD student will be embedded within the Generation R Study, a unique Rotterdam-based birth cohort that started in 2002 and has been following the lives of nearly 10,000 children across development. As part of the FAMILY consortium, we will create an unprecedentedly large database of neonatal circulating miRNA profiles using stored biological samples from birth in Generation R (circa 1500 samples), from a set of children who also already have information on DNA methylation, as well as a wide range of data on parental mental health, genetic and environmental factors as well as child neurodevelopmental, cognitive and mental health outcomes into adolescence.

The PhD student will use genetic, environmental, biological, and psychosocial data from Generation R for her/his research project. This includes longitudinal data from pregnancy up to 18 years of age, collected based on questionnaires as well as during home-visits and visits at the Generation R research centre. The PhD student will be responsible for analyzing this new resource of circulating miRNA profiles, in order to (i) characterize circulating miRNA profiles in the general pediatric population; (ii) use advanced genetic designs to separate genetic vs environmental influences on miRNA profiles; and (iii) test the role of miRNAs as a potential marker vs mechanism of intergenerational transmission of psychiatric risk. The PhD student will also explore associations between miRNA profiles and resilience as well as potential sex differences.

The PhD student will participate in the Generation R data collection, analyze data and write peer-reviewed international publications that will result in a PhD thesis. This will be done in close collaboration with the Departments of Epidemiology and Pediatrics, as well as with national and international research groups. During her/his PhD, the student will take an MSc course in (Genetic) Epidemiology at the Netherlands Institute for Health Sciences (in the event that this has not already been acquired). A budget for training and travel costs, for example to visit international collaborators and for conferences, is available. The candidate is expected to share results of their research in traditional peer-reviewed literature, but also actively participate in open science culture, e.g. by sharing analysis scripts, summary data, or open-source R packages. The ideal candidate is passionate about increasing our understanding of psychiatric disorders and underlying biological pathways. The PhD student will be supervised by Dr. Charlotte Cecil, Director of the inDEPTH Lab and Team Leader of the Biological Psychopathology research line in Generation R, Dr. Alexander Neumann, senior researcher in Generation R, and Prof. dr. Neeltje van Haren, Professor of Brain Development and Psychopathology as well as Coordinator of the FAMILY consortium.