Check out the EASTBIO April 2023 Newsletter here!

The University of St Andrews currently advertises one EASTBIO PhD project for a studentship in the area of Crops and Soil. The studentship is fully funded by the UKRI BBSRC. The successful candidate will join the 2022 student cohort and the new EASTBIO Training Programme.

Project title: Crops as a route to growth factor (GF) production for cellular agriculture

Project Supervisors: Professor L. Torrance, Dr Andrew Love, Professor D. Stewart

Details of the projects are advertised here.

Closing date: 30 September 2022

You are asked to contact the project's first supervisor before you apply to the host institution.

EASTBIO DTP Partner institution Moredun Research Institute advertises a PhD project for a start in October 2022. The project is fully-funded for a 4-year programme of study and the successful applicant will be joining the EASTBIO Training Programme.

Project title: Living with parasites: exploring tolerance of infection to reduce the impact of gastrointestinal nematodes on sheep

Primary supervisor: Dr Adam Hayward, Moredun Research Institute

Closing Date: 21/09/2022

Details of project here.

In 2022, EASTBIO has awarded two UKRI BBSRC Doctoral Career Development Funds to the following former EASTBIO students:

First, Dr Jennifer Wardle who has been working with Professor Jo Smith at the University of Aberdeen, School of Biological Sciences on the project involving the production of an "interactive web resource mapping urban food growing locations around Aberdeen with pop-up quantitative and qualitative information about the soils found there" (April to August 2022). The project falls under the 3rd BBSRC strand of exploring the application of Jennifer's doctoral research and training beyond academia for economic or societal impact in other sectors: it establishes connections with key and periphery participants in urban growing activities; provides laboratory characterisation of soil samples from a range of urban food growing sites and includes interviews of soil keepers.
 

Dr Stefan Pulver (University of St Andrews) and EASTBIO Alumnus Dr Jacob Francis (2017 intake) have been awarded a BBSRC Impact Acceleration Award for  £23,593, providing 5 months of PDRA funding (from August to December 2022) for Jacob to work with Cairn Research Ltd to commercialize/disseminate his BBSRC DTP work on developing Open Source Software for microscopy. Cairn has also confirmed that they will provide funding for an additional month to support this work full-time. This is a formidable example of the kind of beneficial extensions arise from academia-industry collaboration at PhD and placement level, as supported by the EASTBIO DTP CASE studentships scheme.

EASTBIO DTP offers our congratulations to both Stefan and Jacob for securing these funds and wish them best of luck with their project!
 
 

Lorenzo Croce is a first-year PhD student at the University of Aberdeen, working with Professor Peter McCaffery on a Collaborative project, "Rethinking the retinoic acid receptor: a revisionary view of the rapid pathways triggered."

EASTBIO DTP understands the significant opportunity that its Undergraduate Research Experience Placements offers to undergraduate students who may wish to embark on a research career path. EASTBIO is committed to delivering the scheme. However, we will not be able to offer placements this year due to continued restrictions operating in many labs. The scheme will be re-launched in the summer of 2022, with additional awards to take into account those we have been unable to host in 2020 or 2021, and will include a programme of Widening Participation activities open to eligible applicants. We will advertise further details via our website in early 2022. 

EASTBIO DTP Management Group

EASTBIO DTP3 funding

It is with great delight that we announce that the EASTBIO DTP3 bid has been successful. The Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC, a part of UK Research and Innovation) announced £170m in funding to support 1700 PhD researchers over the next 5 years. BBSRC’s Doctoral Training Partnerships (DTPs) provide vital training to early career scientists working at the cutting edge of biology and biotechnology.

The EASTBIO partnership, one of the three largest UKRI-BBSRC DTPs, has been providing training for PhD students at the Universities of Aberdeen, Dundee, Edinburgh and St Andrews uninterruptedly since it was initially funded in 2012. The partnership is now expanding to include the University of Stirling, Scotland’s Rural College, the James Hutton Institute, the Moredun Research Institute, the Industrial Biotechnology Innovation Centre (IBioIC), the Scottish Universities Life Sciences Alliance (SULSA) and the Cool Farm Alliance.

Jennifer Wardle, a fourth-year EASTBIO student at the University of Aberdeen, has been working with Professor Jo Smith on the project "Resolving conflict between demands on organic waste in rural Ethiopia - Optimum solutions for food, energy and water security". 

During the COVID-19 pandemic and the ensuing lockdown, Jennifer has produced a short animation on "Genet's new biogas digester". This an animation summary about her research topic, involving small-scale biogas production in rural Ethiopia. It shows the need for inter-disciplinary approaches to address the main challenges in her research project, as with many of the world’s problems. It was also a good way to escape her usual PhD routine while still being constructive.

Enjoy the video on the link below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5nHoRivCr_c&rel=0