PhD Studentship: Immune Ageing (Fully Funded, Fixed Term)

About the role

A fully funded, four-year PhD studentship is offered at the Cambridge Institute for Therapeutic Immunology and Infectious Disease (CITIID), within the Department of Medicine at the University of Cambridge. It is part of CG-AGE, a five-year collaboration between the University and GlaxoSmithKline focused on the mechanisms and phenotypes of immune ageing. The project studies how immune age relates to vaccine protection and clinical outcomes, and how aged immunity can be modulated.

Key responsibilities

• Quantify multiple immune age metrics in a longitudinal population undergoing annual vaccination challenges, and relate them to vaccine protection and clinical outcomes.
• Use multi-omic single-cell methods to identify cell subpopulations linked to chronological and immunological ageing, their differentiation trajectories and multi-omic features.
• Explore how aged immune responses change over time and how this knowledge can be used to modulate aged immunity.
• Depending on interest, combine computational machine learning approaches with wet-lab experiments on aged samples, including multi-omic single-cell datasets and immune organoid models.
• Interpret age-related changes in immunity using machine learning and AI techniques.

Required profile

• Highly motivated, enthusiastic and industrious, able to work independently and in a team.
• Background in molecular biology or computational biology/informatics; thorough training will be provided in both fields.
• UK 2:1 Honours degree (or equivalent) in a relevant subject, or expected to obtain one.

What we offer

• Full funding: annual stipend and home-rate tuition fees covered for four years.
• An optional 6-month sabbatical in another laboratory in Cambridge or at GSK, possibly including a GSK placement.
• Weekly journal clubs, poster presentations, networking events and PI-led core topic sessions on bioinformatics, flow cytometry, data analysis, statistics, genetic screens, proteomics and scientific writing.
• Thesis of no more than 60,000 words within five years of starting.

Applications are made through the University of Cambridge Postgraduate Admissions portal by 15 January 2027, quoting reference RC51518. Overseas students may need to cover the extra cost of international fees through scholarships.