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Chancellor's Fellowships: closing dates 16 Jan, 29 Feb, 16 Apr 2012
The University of Edinburgh is appointing up to 100 Chancellor's Fellowships across the University's 22 Schools as an investment in the future of teaching and research.
These prestigious awards are aimed at early career individuals of the highest potential who have begun to establish a reputation for the highest quality research at the forefront of their discipline and who have a commitment to learning and teaching at university level. The University has been able to make this investment because of its highly successful research, teaching and commercialisation performance.
The annoucement of the fellowships co-incided with election of Princess Anne as Chancellor of the University and she agreed to have them named in her honour.
The IGMM hopes to attract a number of Chancellor's Fellowships.
The first closing date for applications is 16 January and details of how to apply can be found here...
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New Studentship Opportunities
The Institute of Genetics and Molecular Medicine (IGMM) forms part of the University of Edinburgh and is a large, integrated research institute composed of the Molecular Medicine Centre, the MRC Human Genetics Unit, and the Edinburgh Cancer Research Centre. The IGMM’s priorities are basic biomedical research through to clinical research across a wide range of themes. Programmes of work include the following list of themes: genetics of common and complex human diseases, epigenetics, developmental biology and pediatrics, brain biology and disease, cancer biology and biomedical systems analysis. There are currently around 75 PhD students in training across the IGMM.
The successful applicant will be joining an innovative and exciting 4 year PhD program within the IGMM Graduate School, which incorporates an initial period that includes both academic and practical training in a wide-range of research methodology. Short research projects in a variety of labs (in the first 6 months) will help students make informedchoices for PhD projects.
Students will then choose their main PhD project and have 3.5 years to complete their PhD research.
Up to thirteen studentships are available of which six will be based in the MRC HGU and seven in the wider IGMM with different subject streams (one dedicated to cancer research, for example). These will be available in September 2012. We expect that successful candidates will have an excellent academic record and a broad interest in the research themes of the IGMM.
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Mysteries of the Human Genome: April 2012
Every cell in your body contains a complete copy of your DNA, your genome, that contains the instructions which were used to build the person you are from a fertilized egg. These instructions involve the 20,000 or so stretches of DNA we call genes, and the conversations among the genes underpin all of human biology. Some of these genes are so ancient that we share them with every other living thing on earth, but nowadays biologists are as interested in the parts of the genome that lie outside genes: regions that have been referred to as the 'dark matter' of the genome.
Many of these mysterious parts of the genome have been shown to direct the activity of genes and play critical roles during your development within your mother's womb and in human evolution. Although more than 99% of your genome is identical to mine, the human genome is large, and we differ on average at several million single points in our DNA sequences.
We know that certain variations an individual may carry at these points increase your risk of contracting common diseases like cancers, heart disease and stroke. Scientists are now sequencing thousands of additional human genomes from people all over the world to discover more of this variation and to better understand its effects. The results promise to revolutionize our views of human biology and medicine.
Join Dr Colin Semple (Head of Bioinformatics at the Medical Research Council Human Genetics Unit) to hear about the surprises and mysteries uncovered since the first human genome sequence was published a decade ago.
Edinburgh International Science Festival talk:
1 April 15.30
National Museum of Scotland
TICKETS £8.00
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