PhD Studentship: Decoding cellular diversity in the brain: functional annotation of neuronal subtypes across development and disease

Overview

This PhD studentship focuses on decoding cellular diversity in the brain through the functional annotation of neuronal subtypes across development and disease. The project aims to isolate distinct neuronal populations, including excitatory, inhibitory, and regionally specialised subtypes such as motor neurons, to determine how their regulatory landscapes vary across brain regions, development, and ageing. The research involves using existing single-cell and multiomic datasets to identify nuclear markers, developing fluorescence-activated nuclei sorting strategies for human brain tissue samples from the cortex, hippocampus, amygdala, hypothalamus, and other disease-relevant regions, and applying functional genomic technologies to characterise gene regulation.

What you get

The position provides funding for university fees as well as an annual stipend of £21,805 for the 2026/7 period. The studentship is supported by existing multiomic human brain datasets, post-mortem tissue spanning multiple regions and developmental stages, cell-sorting platforms, sequencing facilities, and high-performance computing.

Key dates

The closing date for applications is 2026-12-08.