PhD Studentship - Restructuring Motor Maps by Developmental Expansion of Motor Cortex Neuroscience

Funding for: UK Students 

Funding amount: Funding will cover tuition fees for UK students (at the Home rate), a stipend at the UKRI rate, and a consumables budget.

This is a 3.5-year PhD studentship funded by the Leverhulme Trust, starting in September 2026 under the supervision of Dr Varun Sreenivasan, School of Life Sciences at the University of Sussex.

Complex movements form the basis of many behaviours and understanding them at a fundamental level remains an open challenge in neuroscience. Primary motor cortex or M1 is a critical brain region for volitional motor control. Investigations to date have addressed how M1 in the adult brain controls movements, and decades of research have uncovered an important property that relates movement to neuronal and circuit function in this region – motor maps. But how and when do motor maps form in the developing cortex, and why did this property emerge during cortical evolution?

Our experiments will address these open questions in the mouse’s whisker system by combining optogenetic motor mapping, behavioural filming and developmental perturbations. By specifically deleting Coup-TF1, a key transcription factor which suppresses motor identity in “non-motor” regions during development, we will test a novel hypothesis which posits that expanding M1 into “non-motor” regions will restructure cortical motor maps.

References:

Further details on the lab can be found at https://www.sysneurodevlab.org/

Eligibility & How to apply:

Please submit a formal application using the online admissions portal (via the ‘Apply’ button above) attaching a CV, degree transcripts and certificates, and two academic referees. A research proposal is not required. Instead, please upload a personal statement describing your subject areas of interest, skills and previous experience, motivation for Doctoral Research, future goals, and why you are applying to this project.

On the application system select Programme of Study – PhD Neuroscience. Please select ‘funding obtained’ and state the supervisor’s name where required.

Candidates should have or expect to obtain a minimum 2:1 undergraduate degree. An MSc degree is advantageous. Your qualification should be in Neuroscience. You may also be considered for this position if you have professional qualifications or experience in engineering.

Candidates should demonstrate willingness to build and program their experimental setup and learn data analysis.

Candidates for whom English is not their first language will require an IELTS score of 6.5 overall or equivalent proficiency - English language requirements 

For enquiries about the application process, please email Emma Chorley: lifesci-rec@sussex.ac.uk  

For enquiries about the project, please email Dr Varun Sreenivasan at v.sreenivasan@sussex.ac.uk 

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