Funding

The Institute for Precision Health offers numerous funding opportunities to enhance your research and industrial collaborations via the UKRI MRC Impact Acceleration Accounts (IAA) award. Funding calls will be announced via the Institute and drugdiscovery@le.ac.uk mailbox at several points during the year. There may be further opportunity for small awards in between formal calls, so please email drugdiscovery@le.ac.uk to talk through your ideas.

Additionally, the Institute can provide funding to facilitate networking opportunities for grant development. Please contact Lynne Howells (lh28@le.ac.uk) for further information.

Internship - expression of interest from investigators

The Institute for Precision Health is pleased to announce that they will fund, over Summer 2024, one 4-week health-related research internship for a 2nd year undergraduate student as part of the Institute’s widening participation strategy.
This scholarship, which will offer a valuable training opportunity, is open to 2nd year undergraduate home students belonging to any school within the University of Leicester (only UoL students will be considered).

This internship should preferably run between the 10th June and 19th July (allowing final Unitemps payments to be made prior to end of financial year).

The successful candidate will receive a stipend at the real living wage rate (currently £12/hr) for a period of 4 weeks. The internship will be supported by up to £250 towards project costs.

We are now calling for an expression of interest from investigators. If you are able to host a student over the summer for a 4 week health-related project, please could you provide:

• Name and Department
• Prospective project title with brief project overview
• Skills the student would gain from the project.

Please send the above details to Lynne Howells lh28@leicester.ac.uk by 8 December.
Projects will be advertised to students in the New Year, interviews conducted in the 1st week of March, and outcomes communicated to all applicants by the week commencing 11/03/24.

Postgraduate research

The Institute for Precision Health has an active postgraduate community. New studentships will be announced here, and we welcome enquiries about our PhD projects. 

Our students are undertaking world-leading research in the following areas:

Circulating RNA as a liquid biopsy for cancer detection and tissue-of-origin prediction

• Katie Anne Dixon, supervised by Professor Jacqui Shaw and Dr Ricky Joshi

Inequalities in precision medicine in under-served groups

• Monica Kundu, supervised by Professor Kamlesh Khunti and Drs Setor Kunutsor and Ash Routen

Proteomic investigation of markers of chronic inflammation in cardiovascular disease

• Ammar Akram, supervised by Dr Dennis Bernieh, Dr Pankaj Gupta and Professor Don Jones

Functional investigation of a potential novel drug target for progressive lung fibrosis

• Catherine McMullen, supervised by Dr Katy Roach and Professor Louise Wain

Developing a virtual asthma patient

• Mahesh Ola, supervised by Dr Himanshu Kaul and Professor Chris Brightling

Investigation of proteomic biomarkers of hypertension using microsampling-based mass spectrometry detection

• Elliott Gyedu, supervised by Dr Pankaj Gupta and Dr Dennis Bernieh

Radiomic and multiomic investigation of molecular pathways in concentric left ventricular myocardial remodelling in Type 2 Diabetes (T2DM)

• Nikita Bhakta, supervised by Professor Leong Ng and Dr Alastair Moss

Mechanisms of intrinsic resistance to bispecific antibodies in diffuse large B cell lymphoma (DLBCL)

• Joshua Bray, supervised by Dr Harriet Walter and Professor Martin Dyer

Understanding the effect of SGLT2i on muscle health in those with chronic disease

• Cian Sutcliffe, supervised by Professor Melanie Davies and Dr Luke Baker

Further research