PhD Studentship: Understanding the relationship between indoor air quality in schools and asthma and educational outcomes

The successful candidate will work in a highly interdisciplinary environment as part of a vibrant cohort of HDR UK-funded PhD students, with outstanding networking opportunities with fellow students and colleagues located across the 4 nations of the UK. HDR UK’s mission is to unite the UK’s health data to enable discoveries that improve people’s lives. Its 20-year vision is for large-scale data and advanced analytics to benefit every patient interaction, clinical trial, and biomedical discovery and to enhance public health.

This PhD is funded as part of the HDR UK Inflammation and Immunity Driver Programme, which seeks to transform the UK’s capabilities to improve understanding of mechanisms and health outcomes, using respiratory and allergic disorders as exemplar domains. We seek to enrol the most exceptional candidates and nurture them to become the next generation of leaders in health data science. The successful candidate will have opportunities to access, and contribute to, training activities organised by HDR UK, including via HDRUK Futureshttps://hdruklearning.csod.com/login/re as well as within their own institution and as part of the Driver Programme team.

This Driver Programme will explore inflammation and immunity as general underpinning mechanisms, using highly prevalent respiratory and allergic diseases in the first instance. These illnesses can be exacerbated by acute inflammatory episodes due to infections (i.e., rhinovirus, coronaviruses, influenza, pneumonia, RSV) a well as pollution, tobacco, pollen, weather, drugs, foods and stinging insects. The long-term plan for the Driver Programme is to extend the data science capabilities and capacity created, to other inflammatory mediated diseases.

This PhD studentship aims to train the successful candidate in public health research methods, health inequalities, epidemiology, and population data science. The student will investigate whether poorer indoor air quality in schools leads to worse asthma and educational outcomes. 

This student will also receive supervisory support from the Social & Environmental Determinants of Health Driver Programme and be supported by the recently funded CHILI hub. The CHILI Hub aims to support and improve children’s education as school buildings are being made environmentally sustainable in order to meet the net zero target by 2050. Greater insultation and airtight building designs make buildings more energy efficient, but may also lead to more indoor air pollution becoming trapped, or increasing indoor temperature. Respiratory infections also spread more easily in airtight buildings.

The student will receive state-of-the-art training to develop their knowledge and skills in epidemiology, population data science, such as data manipulation, modelling, and visualization, and information governance. The student will have the opportunity to engage with stakeholders early in their research to receive feedback on research aims and design and translate their findings into policy and practice. 

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