Health Data Science: Fully Funded PhD Studentship in Population and Health Data Science

Project Background: Why some people with multiple sclerosis (MS) experience faster changes in brain structures (neurodegeneration) than others? What genetic associations with brain regional characteristics might explain these differences? MS is a complex disease, with damage to the brain and nervous system that varies widely between individuals. This PhD project offers an opportunity to investigate the genetic factors influencing changes in brain structures, using brain imaging, computational and statistical methods of network science.  

Project Aim: The aim of the project is to uncover the complex relationship between brain structure, myelin distribution and genetic factors in MS.  

Research Focus: Recently, computational pipelines have been developed to integrate genetic and imaging databases for characterising genetic basis of neurodegeneration. Additionally, our research group works on developing novel computational methods for extraction of cortical morphometric features from clinical brain scans and network analysis of interactions between these features. These pipelines and computational tools will be used to integrate imaging and genetic data, and maps of myelin distribution in the cortical grey matter to analyse patterns of neurodegeneration in MS from a large-scale study in these patients.  

Research environment and benefit: The successful candidate will join the new research group in the Health Data Science in the Faculty of Health, Medicine and Life Science at Swansea University, in addition to interacting with the research group in the Life Science department. The candidate will receive extensive training in computational and analytical methods, gaining skills highly valued in both academic and industry research.  

Qualifications:  A strong background in qualitative sciences: biomedical engineering, medical physics, image analysis, computational neuroscience or quantitative psychology is desirable.  

If you would like to work on a PhD project about biological understanding of human diseases and if you are interested in applying cutting-age computational approaches to real-world datasets, we encourage you to apply.

Funding Comment

This scholarship covers the full cost of tuition fees and an annual stipend at UKRI rate (currently £20,780 for 2025/26). 

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