CLOSTNET - A Unique Opportunity to join a World - Class Research Team
22 PhD POSITIONS ACROSS 7 MEMBER STATES
The genus Clostridium are a large and important group of bacteria, from both a medical and industrial perspective. Thus:
- C. difficile is now one of Europe’s most important causes of hospital infection.
- C. perfringens is causing devastation in the European poultry industry
- C. botulinum continues to fuel public concerns over its misuse by bioterrorists
- C. acetobutylicum offers hope in potential sustainable biofuel production
- C. sporogenes & C. novyi offer novel cures for treating cancer
As a consequence, there is an urgent need to better understand the basic biology of these important bacteria to counter the diseases they cause and exploit their potential benefits.
Using cutting edge technology and pulling together the expertise from Centres of Excellence across Europe, “CLOSTNET” aims to meet this need. This four year, 5 million project is funded by the EU Marie Curie FP7 People Programme and involves academic and industrial partners from 7 European Member States. At the heart of the study is the revolutionary “ClosTron” technology developed by the University of Nottingham which allows systematic inactivation of genes to evaluate their function. The programme will include 5 workshops and two open Clostridia conferences.
CLOSTNET represents a unique opportunity for a total of 22 young researchers of any nationality or country of residence to pursue a PhD based at one of these Centres of Excellence (2 students per centre). Each PhD will be of 36 months and will involve up to 6 months secondment to a partner laboratory.
Each of the 11 Partners will take on 2 students each, ie., 22 in total.
Student 1: will be expected to begin their studies as close to the 1st October 2009 as possible, and no later than 31st December 2009.
Student 2: will be expected to begin their studies no earlier than 1st January 2010, and no later than 31st August 2010.
Final closing date is 30th May 2010.
