This new position is 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 Dr 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 tools 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 will be looking for someone PhD qualified, or working towards their PhD, in Mathematical Biology or other relevant quantitative subject or infectious disease epidemiology with a strong quantitative component. 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