https://www.gosh.nhs.uk/our-research/our-research-infrastructure/nihr-great-ormond-street-hospital-brc/support-researchers/brc-opportunities/nihr-gosh-brc-translational-research-non-clinical-phd-studentships/

NIHR GOSH BRC Translational Research (Non-Clinical) PhD Studentships

CLOSED for applications

Application deadline: Wednesday 10th May 2023

Aim

The NIHR Great Ormond Street Hospital Biomedical Research Centre (NIHR GOSH BRC) PhD Studentship Programme aims to fund five highly motivated non-clinical PhDs students to support the training and development of the next generation of translational researchers. The studentships will be full time and begin in September/October 2023. They will be based at Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH) and the UCL Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health (ICH), which together form the largest concentration of children's health research in Europe.

Background

The NIHR GOSH BRC is a collaboration between GOSH and ICH. The NIHR GOSH BRC provides cutting-edge facilities and world-leading expertise allowing our staff and NHS, university and industry collaborators to conduct pioneering translational research into childhood illnesses. We were first awarded BRC status from the NIHR in 2007 and, in 2022, we secured £35 million for our fourth term until 2027. In this fourth term, as part of a wider national collaboration - a BRC National Paediatric Excellence Initiative has been set up between GOSH BRC and children’s hospitals in Birmingham, Sheffield and Liverpool.

The GOSH BRC has five main research themes:

Gene, Stem and Cellular Therapies (GSCT) - focuses on innovative gene, stem and cellular therapies that can overcome the limitations of current treatments for a wide range of children with rare inherited and acquired disorders.
Genomic Medicine (GM) - uses cutting-edge genetic technology and novel computational methods of analysing large datasets to improve genetic diagnosis of disease and delivering effective interventions pre and postnatally to reduce the burden of childhood disease.
Accelerating Novel Therapies (ANT) - develops and delivers innovative treatments that will overcome the paucity of precision therapies for rare childhood diseases.
Applied Child Health Informatics (ACHI) - uses advanced data analysis methods, leveraging GOSH’s electronic patient data, to improve the management of children with rare and/or complex disease.
Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine (TERM) – develops pioneering techniques to repair and reconstruct tissues and organs to improve life expectancy and quality of life for children with tissue and organ failure.

These are complemented by the BRC Central Development Hub which provides support for our Career Development Academy, alongside other activities including Patient and Public Involvement and Engagement (PPIE); Equality, Diversity and Inclusion; the BRC Junior Faculty; and Business Development. The BRC is committed to high quality postgraduate education with a diverse range of opportunities, and with GOSH and ICH, have a strong track record of training and support for students and supervisors.

Further details about the PhD studentships

We are advertising three-year full time non-clinical BRC PhD Studentships beginning in September/October 2023. Successful students will be appointed and registered as UCL PhD students and will be based at UCL Institute of Child Health. Some projects have a member of the supervisory team and/or time in the studentship at one of our partner sites within the Paediatric Excellence Initiative (Alder Hey, Birmingham and Sheffield Children’s Hospitals. We have funding for five studentships, with one to be supported within each of our five research themes mentioned above.

The student will receive a starting stipend of £20,198 per annum (includes London weighting) as well as the cost of tuition fees for UK students, and £5,000 contribution towards the running costs of their project. Applicants are required to apply to undertake a specific project, with students selecting a first and second choice project (in priority order). The table below provides a summary of the projects available, with further details about each of the projects included in the PhD Project Portfolio document. Enquiries regarding the projects can be made to the project supervisors and their contact details can be provided upon request. In some instances, the primary and subsidiary supervisors may be switched.

BRC Research Theme	Project Title	Primary Supervisor	Subsidiary Supervisor(s)
Accelerating Novel Therapies	Using data and discovery science to target better treatments for children with lupus nephritis (The Discover LN project)	Professor Stephen Marks, Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children NHS Foundation Trust	Dr Louise Oni and Professor Michael Beresford, University of Liverpool
Accelerating Novel Therapies	Developing new cell models to accelerate novel therapies for lysosomal diseases	Professor Sara Mole, UCL Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health	Dr Wendy Heywood, UCL Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health
Accelerating Novel Therapies	Gene silencing for the rare disorder STING associated vasculitis with onset in infancy (SAVI)	Professor Despina Eleftheriou, UCL Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health	Professor Paul Brogan, UCL Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health
Accelerating Novel Therapies	Developing individualized nucleic acid therapeutics for rare childhood neurodegenerative disorders	Dr Haiyan Zhou, UCL Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health	Professor Manju Kurian, UCL Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health and Dr Hannah Titheradge, Birmingham Women’s and Children’s Hospital
Accelerating Novel Therapies	Epilepsy in 3D: using stem-cell models to develop new epilepsy treatments	Dr Amy McTague, UCL Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health	Dr Haiyan Zhou, UCL Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health
Applied Child Health Informatics	Health and development outcomes and their interaction for children with chronic liver disease: a population-based cohort using novel linkage between health and education records	Professor Katie Harron, UCL Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health	Dr Marianne Samyn, King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust/ King’s College London and Dr Ania Zylbersztejn, UCL Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health
Applied Child Health Informatics	Disease modelling to understand long-term progression and treatment response in Spinal Muscular Atrophy and Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy	Dr Giovanni Baranello, UCL Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health	Ms Deborah Ridout, UCL Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health, Dr Min Ong, Sheffield Children’s Hospital, Dr Deepak Parasuraman, University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust and Ms Sarah Gregson, Alder Hey Children’s NHS Foundation Trust
Applied Child Health Informatics	Health and education outcomes of children with Sickle Cell Disease in England	Dr Rachel Knowles, UCL Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health	Dr Pia Hardelid, UCL Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health
Applied Child Health Informatics	Using artificial intelligence and machine learning techniques to predict sudden cardiac death in children with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy	Dr Juan Pablo Kaski, Great Ormond Street Hospital	Dr Alvina Lai, UCL Institute of Health Informatics and Gabrielle Norrish, Great Ormond Street Hospital
Genomic Medicine	The mosaic brain: a new diagnostic approach in focal epilepsies.	Mr Martin Tisdall, Great Ormond Street Hospital	Dr Amy McTague, UCL Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health and Dr Natalie Chandler and Dr Lara Menzies, Great Ormond Street Hospital
Genomic Medicine	Genetic factors underlying severity of outcomes in congenital cytomegalovirus infections: insights from viral genomics and host-pathogen interactions.	Professor Judith Breuer, UCL Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health	Dr Cristina Venturini, UCL Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health
Gene, Stem and Cellular Therapies	Gene therapy for childhood neurometabolic disease	Professor Nicholas Greene, UCL Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health	Dr Kit-Yi Leung and Dr Paula Alexandre, UCL Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health
Gene, Stem and Cellular Therapies	Liver-directed lentiviral gene therapy for progressive familial intrahepatic cholestasis type 2 (PFIC2)	Professor Paul Gissen, UCL Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health	Dr Tamir Rashid, Imperial College London
Gene, Stem and Cellular Therapies	Rescuing B cell development in patients affected by X-linked agammaglobulinemia	Dr Giorgia Santilli, UCL Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health	Professor Claire Booth, UCL Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health
Gene, Stem and Cellular Therapies	Developing AAV gene therapy for Polycystic Kidney Disease	Dr Jennie Chandler, UCL Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health	Professor David Long and Professor Thomas Voit, UCL Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health
Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine	Decellularized CNS patch to rescue impaired neurogenesis in spina bifida	Dr Gabriel Galea, UCL Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health	Professor Paolo De Coppi, UCL Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health
Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine	Building mini organs for disease modelling	Professor Paolo De Coppi, UCL Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health	Dr Giovanni Giobbe, UCL Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health
Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine	Establishing 3-dimensional human organoids to study complex lymphatic anomaly	Dr Maanasa Polubothu, Great Ormond Street Hospital	Professor David Long, UCL Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health and Professor Veronica Kinsler UCL Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health (seconded to Francis Crick Institute)

Eligibility

Applicants should have or expect to receive a first class or upper second-class degree in a relevant discipline or an overseas qualification of an equivalent standard. Applicants should also be able to provide recent evidence that their spoken and written command of the English language is adequate for the studentship for which they have applied, if they are not nationals of a majority English speaking country, in line with UCL PhD entry requirement (see English language requirements for further information).

Important information about the application and selection process - please read carefully

If you are interested in submitting an application, please read the following documents:

Guidance Document - provides further information about the call and includes the application form

PhD Project Portfolio - provides further details about the available projects

Reference Form - for two referees to complete

Once you've read the documents, in order to apply:

Complete the ‘NIHR GOSH BRC PhD Translational Research (Non-Clinical) Studentships 2023 - Application Form’, which can be found at the end of the Guidance Document. Send the completed Application Form and a copy of your CV to brc@gosh.nhs.uk.
Separately, you should arrange directly with your two referees to provide a reference once you have submitted your application. Please ask your referees to use the Reference Form and to send the reference by email to brc@gosh.nhs.uk.
The deadline for applications and references is Wednesday 10th May 2023.

Following submission of applications, there will be several stages to the process of selecting students, including shortlisting and interview stages. Further details are provided in the guidance document.

Please contact brc@gosh.nhs.uk if you have any questions.