Fully Funded EPSRC and Microsaic Systems PhD Scholarship: An Analytical and Epigenetic Investigation of the Environmental and Human Health Impacts of Per- and Polyfluoroalkyl Forever Chemicals

This scholarship is funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and Microsaic Systems plc.

Start date: October 2021

Subject areas: Analytical science, environmental medicine, environmental monitoring, epigenetics

Environmental pollution has been strongly linked to adverse human health outcomes, leading to growing research in this area. Given the breadth of chemicals used in everyday life and their resistance to environmental breakdown, the risk of pollution through release via production, use, ineffective wastewater (WW) remediation, and/or leachate from landfill is significant. ‘Fit-for-purpose’ monitoring approaches are critical to understanding these relationships by determining the pollutant(s), degree of exposure, risk, and efficacy of management processes to better control release and mitigate harm. Monitoring approaches typically require individual sample collection onsite, with sample preparation and analysis using complex instrumentation in a laboratory. This results in the delayed deployment of mitigation measures and has driven research for remote monitoring solutions that provide real-time data to inform automated and/or AI-driven management processes, to quickly react to reduce environmental and public health risks.

Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are pollutants of increasing concern, notorious as ‘forever chemicals’ given their environmental persistence following use as protective, non-stick and fire-retardant coatings within electronics, textiles, cleaning agents and cookware. With a shortage of environmental testing (including drinking water sources) within the UK, and initial human epigenetic studies showing reproductive, developmental, immunological, kidney and carcinogenic effects from exposure via skin, contaminated food or water, there is an increasing need to monitor these pollutants. Furthermore, given there are conflicting accounts of the epigenetic mechanisms of specific PFAS (e.g. DNA methylation from PFOS and PFOA), questions remain as to how these phenotypic changes occur across the breadth of PFAS pollutants and their mixtures. By combining in-house environmental sample preparation and epigenetic approaches, with Microsaic’s miniature mass spectrometer, this project will develop a monitoring platform capable of measuring PFAS at source and within a laboratory setting, and help establish the health impacts of PFAS pollution. Therefore, through partnership with stakeholders of the environmental sector, this work will better inform pollution remediation and capture processes for the safer management of PFAS.

Eligibility

Candidates must have a minimum of upper second class Honours degree in a relevant discipline including chemistry and biochemistry.

Candidate should have experience of analytical instrumentation (liquid chromatography (LC) and mass spectrometry (MS)) and respective software, tissue culture and sample preparation for environmental matrices, analytical (MS) and sample preparation method development for quantitative analysis. 

We would normally expect candidates to have met the University’s English Language requirements  (e.g. IELTS 6.5 overall with 5.5+ in each component) by point of application. 

This scholarship is open to candidate of any nationality.