Please see below for details of currently advertised PhD and Research Master's funding and scholarship opportunities offered at UCD or by funding agencies.
Please note that this does not represent an exhaustive list and students are advised to contact the UCD School in which they are interested in studying to ask about current funding possibilities. You can also find helpful guidance on PhD applications in the 'Planning' phase of the UCD PhD Lifecycle.
In Session 2023/2024, awards of up to €6,000 financed from the Lord Edward Fitzgerald Memorial Fund may be offered to high-quality applications in one or more of the following areas of graduate research, for the purpose of enabling overseas study designed to advance the candidate’s research programme:
Travel and overseas study must be completed by 1 January 2025.
The application for the scholarship must include:
Where relevant, the student is responsible for obtaining the permission of the university/supervisor/research institute that he or she proposes to attend.
Applicants are required to be registered for a higher degree at University College Dublin, and must have been born in or have been ordinarily resident in Ireland for at least ten years; other things being equal, preference will be given to those candidates who are natives of or residing in the County of Dun Laoghaire–Rathdown.
Evaluation criteria:
Evaluation is conducted by a Panel comprising nominees both internal and external to UCD.
The Lord Edward Fitzgerald Medal will be awarded to scholars who satisfactorily demonstrate a successful overseas study. No request for additional funding can be entertained.
Complete the Lord Edward Fitzgerald Memorial Fund 2023/24 Application Form and submit it:
The application deadline is Friday 26 April 2024.
Applications are invited from suitably qualified candidates for a fully funded (fees and stipend), 4-year full-time PhD position at the UCD Clinical Research Centre, University College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland.
This project seeks to identify and validate biomarkers which can be used as endpoints in clinical trials of new medicines in lung fibrosis. Endpoints are measures that can be objectively used to measure whether a new treatment is beneficial. Endpoints must be reproducible, represent the biological response and be sensitive to treatment. Endpoints are critical components of therapeutic development as they provide the means to measure efficacy. Endpoints come in multiple forms, including clinical signs and imaging. In this project however we will seek to identify molecular mediators which are useful as endpoints.
The PhD candidate will use combined in vitro and ex vivo models of lung fibrosis to identify candidate endpoints, by proteomic, transcriptomic and genomic profiling. The candidate will work with models for lung fibrosis including cell culture, flow cytometry, lung on a chip and precision-cut lung slices to study different pathways in lung fibrosis. Candidate endpoints identified through will be validated in ex vivo organ models where response to treatment will be assayed.
Qualifications/Expertise
Applicants should have a 1st or 2:1 Bachelor’s degree in Biomedical or Health Sciences or a related discipline. The ideal candidate should have experience in as many of the following techniques as possible: mammalian cell culture; molecular biology; protein and gene analysis; immunohistochemistry. The candidate should have excellent communication and organisational skills; be highly motivated and have strong written, oral and interpersonal skills. The candidate should be able to work independently and as a part of team.
Funding
The PhD studentship covers tuition fees and a tax-free stipend of €22,000 per year. An annual allowance is provided for conference attendance.
How to apply
Please send a cover letter (1 page max), CV, and academic transcript to Prof Peter Doran (peter.doran@ucd.ie) and Assoc Prof Cormac McCarthy (cormac.mccarthy@ucd.ie) by 1 May 2024.
Fully funded PhD Positions in Cancer Research #META-CHIP
University College Dublin
Development of a lung metastasis-on-a-chip model for osteosarcoma as a biomimetic testing platform for drug discovery and therapeutic innovation
About this project: Osteosarcoma is a highly aggressive bone cancer largely affecting children. Treatment is often radical and debilitating, and despite the clinical urgency for newer more effective therapies, there has been no change in treatment options since the introduction of chemotherapy in the 1970s. As result the current 5-year survival rate in aggressive forms of osteosarcoma is still below 20%. Accelerating cures for those poor outcome patients remains a challenge and this in part is due to a lack of accurate osteosarcoma preclinical models. Traditionally, two dimensional (2D) cell culture and animals have been used as primary cancer drug development models. Although 2D cell culture is relatively easy to perform, it fails to mimic the 3D complexity of the primary tumour microenvironment. On the other hand, animal models for drug testing are labour and time intensive, costly, and most significantly, often yield untranslatable results due to the physiological differences between humans and animals, with estimated drug failure rates as high as 90%. Despite this, animal models remain the main pre-clinical model for validating potential drug candidates for osteosarcoma patients.
Organ-on-a-chip technologies using patient-specific cells, represent a promising alternative as they allow for controllable cell culture within an organotypic microarchitectural environment, providing a simple yet more physiologically relevant platform for drug screening than traditional cell culture/animal models. Specifically, for rare paediatric diseases like osteosarcoma where full clinical trials are challenging, they provide a repeatable, cost-effective, medium-throughput alternative for drug screening. This emerging field hit a major milestone in December 2022, when the US Congress approved the FDA Modernization Act 2.0 allowing the use of organ-on-chip data for drug discovery instead of animal models.
This clearly indicates the immense potential organ-on-chip devices will have in the future for treating rare diseases like osteosarcoma, further emphasising the distinct critical need for the development of the proposed device. This project aims to develop a human systemic lung metastasis-on-a-chip model for osteosarcoma. Once developed, META-CHIP can be incorporated into the drug development pipeline from early drug discovery to preclinical screening, testing, and translation of new drugs for bone cancers, bridging the gap between animal studies and human clinical trials. As part of the PhD programme, you will receive training in organoid culture, hydrogel synthesis, 3D bioprinting, organ-on-chip design, advanced microscopy, and molecular biology analysis.
Two four-year PhD studentships are funded by European Research Council Starting
Grant (#META-CHIP). These studentships include full tuition, a PhD stipend of €25,000 per annum (tax free), and a research budget to cover research costs associated with the project.
Students will be enrolled onto UCD’s structured PhD programme, which includes some taught elements and transferrable skills training, providing an excellent foundation for a research career.
About the research team: Dr Fiona Freeman is an Ad Astra Fellow, a Conway Fellow, a funded investigator in the SFI Research Centre in Curam and Advanced Materials and Bioengineering Research, and a PI within UCD Centre for Biomedical Engineering and Trinity Centre for Bioengineering. Dr Freeman leads a multidisciplinary research group investigating the use of innovative biomedical engineering techniques to better understand and develop novel therapeutics to treat paediatric bone cancer, Osteosarcoma.
Minimum Qualifications: A Master’s Degree (or equivalent) in Biomedical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Molecular Bioengineering, Medicine, Veterinary Medicine, Biomedical Sciences or a closely related area. Candidates should enjoy working as part of a team and have a keen interest in biomedical device design.
How to apply: For further information and to apply, please email Dr Freeman (she/her) at fiona.freeman@ucd.ie.
Applicants should submit the following as a single pdf document:
Interviews will take place in May 2024 via video call. The candidate should be in a position to start their PhD by September 2024.
View the full PhD lifecycle at UCD, from application to conferring
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