PhD scholarship: unravelling the origins and evolution of the Animal Kingdom
using genomics – October 2016
The Animal Kingdom comprises some of the major transitions in the evolution of life,
embracing a spectacular diversity product of hundreds of millions of years. Intriguing questions on
its beginnings and major transitions are still a mystery: which genomic events are related to the
advent multicellular animals from single cell organisms? What are the causes of the major
transitions such as the emergence from animals with radial symmetry (as sponges or jellyfish) of
creatures with a bilateral architecture like ourselves? How the content of metazoan genomes is
related to the animals’ main body plans and adaptations such as parasitism, sessility, or body size
reduction? The revolution introduced by Next Generation Sequencing provides a timely chance to
approach those questions using comparative genomics.
The new Genomics section of the School of Biological Sciences (University of Essex) is
offering 4 PhD studentships, starting October 2016. The section (http://genomics.essex.ac.uk/) is
led by Prof. Leonard C. Schalkwyk (Psychiatric and Environmental Epigenomics) and includes the
labs of Prof. Meena Kumari (Biological and Social Epidemiology), Dr. Antonio Marco (Evolutionary
Genetics), Dr. Vladimir Teif (Chromatin and Epigenetics), Dr. Radu N. Zabet (Computational and
Theoretical Models of Gene Regulation), Dr. Pradeepa M. Madapura (Chromatin and Generegulation), and Dr. Jordi Paps (Evolutionary Genomics). This section is the result of an initiative to
strengthen the area of genomics in the School by hiring young and successful experts on different
areas of genome biology. On top of the state-of-the art facilities available in the School, the section
also has access to new labs, a cluster of servers, a MiSeq machine, as well as other major
molecular biology equipment. The candidate will benefit from this rich and fresh intellectual
environment and the novel infrastructures.
The PhD student will join the group of Dr Jordi Paps to investigate different aspects of the
evolution
of
the
Animal
Kingdom
using
genomic
data
(http://www.essex.ac.uk/bs/staff/profile.aspx?ID=4561). The applicants should show keen interest
in evolutionary biology, genomics, bioinformatics, and animal diversity; previous knowledge of
Unix/Linux systems and programming languages is desired, but not required. The candidate
should have a good understanding of the research field and demonstrate the ability to think
independently.
Entry requirements and application procedures
Applications should be submitted electronically by Tuesday 29 March 2016 see here for details
https://www.essex.ac.uk/pgapply/enter.aspx Please ensure that for this scholarship a project
proposal is submitted.
Additional questions and queries about the studentship can be addressed to Dr Jordi Paps
([email protected])
The target start date for this 3-year, fully-funded PhD studentship is 6th October 2016.
scholarship will be to the value of £12,500 per annum plus UK tuition fees.
This
The University of Essex
For general information about the School of Biological Sciences at the University please visit our
webpages http://www.essex.ac.uk/bs/.
In the recent Research Excellence Framework 77% of research at the University of Essex
research is 'world leading' or 'internationally excellent' (REF 2014).We offer world-class
supervision and training opportunities and our research students work at the heart of an
internationally-acknowledged and well-connected research community. In the 2013 Postgraduate
Research Experience Survey, 84% of respondents said that they were satisfied with the quality of
their research degree. At Essex we win awards for our pioneering student support schemes. We
are the most recent winners of the prestigious Times Higher Education award for Outstanding
Support for Students. Essex is a genuine global community. With more than 130 countries
represented within our student body, and 40% of our students from overseas, we are one of the
most internationally-diverse universities in the UK.