PhD Studentship: Improving Inherited Cancer Risk Estimates for Black Men

The University of Exeter’s Department of Clinical and Biomedical Sciences is inviting applications for a PhD studentship funded by Prostate Cancer UK to commence on 5 January 2026. For eligible students the studentship will cover Home tuition fees plus an annual tax-free stipend of at least £20,780 for 3 years full-time, or pro rata for part-time study. The student would be based in in the Faculty of Health and Life Sciences.

Prostate cancer is highly heritable and a good target for genetic risk stratification. Prostate cancer genetic risk scores (GRS) aggregate common variants into a predictive score. GRSs have been proposed and publicly advocated for future policy implementation, but have been developed and tested on white populations. They perform poorly for Black men.

This Prostate-Cancer UK funded PhD Scholarship aims to evaluate performance of current GRSs and optimise performance in Black men. The aim is to deliver data-driven evidence to guide future policy implementations of GRSs.

The project will use large genomics databases such as the UK Biobank, a collection of 500,000 individuals including genetic and healthcare records. The project is a data analysis project – from day to day you will be testing and optimising predictive models for use in realistic healthcare settings.

This studentship will suit a student interested in working in health data science, particularly with an interest in cancer outcomes, genomics, and health equity.

The studentship will be awarded on the basis of merit. Students who pay international tuition fees are eligible to apply. However, they should be aware that the award will only covers part (approximately £25,000) of the international tuition fee (currently £28,600pa) and does not include a stipend for living expenses.

International applicants need to be aware that they will have to cover the cost of their student visa, healthcare surcharge and other costs of moving to the UK to do a PhD.

The conditions for eligibility of home fees status are complex and you will need to seek advice if you have moved to or from the UK (or Republic of Ireland) within the past 3 years or have applied for settled status under the EU Settlement Scheme.

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