Opportunity to do PhD at University of Liverpool
We are looking for an exceptional student to join our team as a PhD student and to work on modelling of spatial distribution of pathological lesions in retinal images. The project is located at University of Liverpool, jointly between Department of Biostatistics, Department of Eye and Vision Science and Royal Liverpool University Hospital.
FUNDING: We have funding to support one student
- DURATION: 3 years
- STIPEND (SALARY) we will provide: £14,296 per year
- RESEARCH SUPPORT we will provide: £3,000 per year (running costs/travel/conference allowance)
- FEES we will pay for the student: University full-time PhD Registration Fees at UK/EU rates
START: flexible, around October 2017
ELIGIBILITY: UK/EU students are eligible to apply for the above funding; non EU/UK students can also apply, but please note that we only have funding to cover the UK/EU PhD registration fees
HOW TO APPLY: Please send a cover letter and CV to czannerliverpool.ac.uk
DEADLINE: Candidates are advised to apply as soon as possible as consideration of applications starts immediately, and the studentship will be offered to the first strong candidate who meets the requirements.
ENTRY REQUIREMENTS: The successful candidate should have, or expect to have an Honours Degree at 2.1 or above (or equivalent) in Statistics or Mathematics or Bioinformatics or Computer Science. It is essential to have good background knowledge in mathematics, statistics, computer programming (e.g., Matlab, STATA or R) plus a proactive approach to their work.
PROJECT DESCRIPTION: Images are an essential aspect of monitoring and prediction in clinical management in a wide range of diseases in particular in retinal diseases, such as diabetic retinopathy (DR) and retinal vascular occlusive (RVO) disease. Evaluation of retinal disease typically focuses on assessing the number or size of lesions, but this ignores their spatial context and the patient’s clinical information, which makes existing models less accurate for clinical use.
This project will develop new spatio-temporal statistical monitoring and predictive models for eye diseases by identifying, synthesizing and testing suitable models from a family of novel hierarchical models that we have developed in Liverpool. One of the most promising new avenues of monitoring retinal disease is to have a personalised computerised monitoring tool, but we have yet to identify a suitable statistical spatio-temporal and discriminant approaches to combine imaging data with clinical data.
This studentship will focus on development of statistical longitudinal and spatial models for pathological lesions found in wide field imaging (WFI) data. The student will work under supervision of a statistician (Dr Gabriela Czanner, primary supervisor, http://pcwww.liv.ac.uk/~czanner/ ), closely with the imaging group of (Dr Yalin Zheng, co-supervisor) and retinal consultants (Prof Simon Harding, co-supervisor; Amira Stylianides, Savita Madhusudhan and senior grader David Parry from the Liverpool Ophthalmic Reading Centre). It will develop statistical monitoring models to relate the lesions to diseases such as capillary nonperfusion lesions and will develop statistical methods to find and validate biomarkers for management using existing large datasets. This PhD project is suitable for an ambitious individual wishing to develop a portfolio in statistical research with strong elements of understanding the biomedical imaging and clinical research.
IF YOU HAVE ANY QUERIES: please write to Gabriela Czanner at czannerliverpool.ac.uk