Postdoc position (Glasgow, UK) Modelling trypanosome antigenic variation, the parasites responsible for African Sleeping Sickness

This is a 20+ month position to join an innovative project funded by the Wellcome Trust, investigating trypanosome antigenic variation paradigms using natural systems. An interdisciplinary collaboration between Universities of Glasgow, Edinburgh and Liverpool, the post-holder will be working with Prof Christina Cobbold within the School of Mathematics and Statistics, (Glasgow, UK) collaborating closely with experimentalists to develop novel mathematical models of antigenic variation.

Trypanosomes are parasites that cause African sleeping sickness and are masters of disguise, using antigenic variation to hide from our immune system. In animals the infection causes livestock disease and enormous economic hardship. With experience of working in a multidisciplinary environment, you will be developing novel mathematical models and development innovative quantitative approaches, to uncover the dynamics of antigenic variation from sequence data and other parasite and immune data sampled over time. This exciting project will yield new insights into the biological interactions between trypanosome parasites and their human and animal hosts information that we anticipate could be exploited to help combat the parasite and may be relevant for other pathogens that use antigenic variation for survival.

Ideally we are looking for an individual with a strong quantitative foundation (e.g. with Ph.D. level training in mathematics, statistics, physics, computing science, engineering or quantitative epidemiology or ecology). Candidates should be skilled in one or more common programming languages such as Matlab, R, Python, Fortran, C++ or similar. Experience of Bayesian inference, infectious disease modelling, epidemiology and interaction with biologists would be beneficial, but not necessary.

Informal enquiries can be made to Dr Christina Cobbold (Christina.Cobbold@glasgow.ac.uk), and further information about the project and research team can be found on the website: http://www.maths.gla.ac.uk/~cc/tryp.html