PhD candidate in Behavioural Neurobiology

We are looking for a PhD candidate to join our Neurobiology team.

A.   To be considered a candidate for this role, you must have the following:

•       A Master’s degree in neuroscience, biology, biomedical sciences, psychology, or a related discipline, with relevant experience in rodent behavior, female physiology computational and/or systems neuroscience. If you have completed all the requirements of your degree but are awaiting the official award, a statement from your university that all requirements are met is sufficient. 
•       Completed at least one neuroscience research project (data collection, analysis, interpretation, dissemination)
•       An excellent command of English. Candidates are exempted from proving proficiency in English if one of the following applies:

1.   have completed a secondary education (HAVO or VWO certificate) in the Netherlands,
2.   are a native English speaker
3.   completed a Bachelor or Master degree programme which was fully taught in English.

If you are not exempt please provide sufficient evidence with your application, see the guidelines here: https://www.rug.nl/education/phd-programmes/prospective/phd-positions/english-language-requirements

 B.    In addition, to be considered a strong candidate, you possess most/all of the following:

•       Familiar with scientific literature on women’s brain health, SABV, behavioral neuroendocrinology
•       Prior experience with:

1.   Complex animal behavioral training
2.   EEG sleep analysis
3.   Processing/analysis of neuroimaging (PET/MRI) scans
4.   Immunofluorescence
5.   Hormone assay

•       Article 9 license (FELASA accreditation). If you are outside the EU, prior experience with animal experimentation (with relevant certification)
•       Possess the following soft skills:

1.   Excellent communication skills. Note: this skill is different from language proficiency, which is listed above. Here, we mean how effectively you can convey ideas to an audience and also your ability to understand others (irrespective of language being used)
2.   critical thinking and problem-solving
3.   integrity
4.   accountability
5.   detail-oriented

To understand the short and long-term consequences of estradiol deprivation, you will perform a series of experiments using middle- to older-aged female rats. Menopause will be modeled using a combination of ovarian removal, pharmacological suppression of non-ovarian sources of estradiol using common breast cancer treatments, and experimentally-induced sleep disturbance and thermodysregulation. Outcome measures will vary by experiment and will include markers relevant to estrogen signaling and Alzheimer’s disease, cognition, sleep, temperature, glucose metabolism, among others. The project seeks to identify the conditions under which estradiol loss is detrimental to the aging female brain and when it is not. Implications of these findings include determining who may benefit from menopause hormone therapy and whom may experience the most adverse effects of anti-estrogen breast cancer treatments.

You will be responsible for the implementation of this project, including project management, data analysis/interpretation, and dissemination. You will receive the necessary training to perform techniques relevant to this project from other PhD students, technicians, professors, and supervisors. This includes use of state-of-the-art neuroscience tools, including rodent cognitive tasks (via Bussey-Saksida chambers), confocal microscopes, and positron emission tomography (PET) scan acquisition, processing, and analysis. This latter technique will be performed at the neuroimaging facility for small animals (GronSAI) at the University Medical Center Groningen (UMCG).

You will have regular meetings (weekly/bi-weekly) with your supervisors, the lab, and neurobiology expertise group. As part of the research, you will also be responsible for supervising MSc and BSc students, who will contribute to your project through data collection and analysis, literature review, etc. You will also participate in teaching activities within Biology.

The Neurobiology of Menopause

 This project, by the Dutch Research Council (see here for a written description), focuses on the consequences of menopause for the aging brain. Specifically, we aim to unravel how the female brain adapts to the loss of estrogens during and after this transition period. Using rodent models of menopause and Alzheimer’s disease, the PhD candidate will unravel the short and long-term effects of estradiol loss on the aging brain and will relate these findings to paradoxical effects observed in humans, particularly as they relate to the timing of estradiol actions, anti-estrogen breast cancer treatment, and Alzheimer’s disease risk.

 The PhD candidate will be embedded within the Memory, Sleep, and Hormones (MeSH) lab, a dynamic, friendly, and productive group that currently includes two other PhD candidates and a number of MSc students. This group has access to strong local (Cognition, Aging, and Disease, UMCG) and European networks (EU-SABV, REACT) including individual collaborators within Europe (prof. dr. Thibaut Sesia UCologne and Dr. Janine Doorduin, UMCG), and Canada (cobralab.ca). The candidate will also have the opportunity to expand their network by attending both national (e.g. Dutch Neuroscience) and international (European Sleep Research Society, Society for Behavioral Neuroendocrinology, Organization for the Study of Sex Differences, FENS, AAIC, AD/PD, etc) conferences on the topic. 

The research will be mainly performed in the Neurobiology group at the Groningen Institute for Evolutionary Life Sciences (GELIFES), which comprises several other strong, internationally recognized research groups in the field of molecular neurobiology and behavioral neuroscience. GELIFES is located in the Linnaeusborg building on the Zernike campus, in the northwest corner of Groningen, a vibrant and happy city.