Applications are invited from high-calibre and passionate students seeking to pursue an exciting career in environmental science research, and particularly to help more rapidly understand the potential for contamination of the environment with pharmaceuticals.

Project Description

Pharmaceuticals enter the aquatic environment largely via human excretion to the wastewater network after consumption. Predicting the removal and biotransformation of the active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) in wastewater treatment systems is critical to understanding their fate and potential effects in the receiving aqueous environment. This also enables invention of “benign by design” medicines that are sustainable as well as effective.

In this project you will apply state-of -the-art chemical analysis methods to hundreds of pharmaceuticals in wastewater and receiving water to develop new computational models capable of predicting their removal during treatment and biodegradation rates in the environment. You will develop a tiered high-throughput biodegradation testing, bioinformatics and analytical chemoinformatic approach to predicting API transformation pathways and their predominant enzyme catalysts and to evaluate the influence of catabolic pathways, chemical structure and environmental parameters on API biodegradation rates.

This project will offer a challenging, collaborative and transdisciplinary opportunity for an excellent PhD candidate to work at the forefront of this exciting area with leading academic teams at Newcastle University and Imperial College London and in partnership with AstraZeneca, a globally leading pharmaceutical company. All three teams have extensive track records in this area and will provide complementary and collaborative training in analysis using liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry, advanced chemometrics, bioinformatics and ‘omics. In addition to this, the student will join the MRC-Centre for Environment and Health at Imperial with access to its recognised training programme, offering bespoke learning opportunities for chemometrics, bioinformatics and machine learning as part of its diverse early-career researcher community. As part of the iCASE project, students will be expected to spend at least three months at an AstraZeneca site in the UK providing a unique industry experience and training opportunity.

Location

Based primarily within the Faculty of Medicine, you will join the Environmental Research Group at its brand new state-of-the-art laboratories at the £2 billion Imperial White City Campus . In particular, you will have full access to its new dedicated high throughput mass spectrometry suite to support this project for targeted and untargeted analysis of small molecules in complex samples.

Students will also benefit from access to research facilities at Newcastle University within the Environmental Engineering group of the Civil and Geospatial Engineering discipline in the School of Engineering, which boasts state-of-the-art molecular microbial ecology laboratories and facilities, and novel high-though put biodegradation screening platforms. AstraZeneca is a global biopharmaceutical company specialising in the discovery, development, manufacturing and marketing of prescription medicines. With a strong R&D and implementation track record in ecopharmacovigilance, AstraZeneca leads the pharmaceutical industry in the management of pharmaceuticals in the environment-related topics. For more details, please see here.

Funding

Funding is available for four years for eligible students including Imperial College London tuition fees and a combined BBSRC-AstraZeneca stipend worth approximately £21,560 (tax-free). For eligibility criteria, please see here

Candidate specification and requirements

The project requires a motivated individual who is passionate about environmental science-related issues. A first-class undergraduate degree in analytical chemistry, biochemistry, environmental science, pharmaceutical science or toxicology and a master’s degree in a related area is required. Knowledge of analytical chemistry, transcriptomics, coding and machine learning is desirable, ideally with research experience.

Informal enquiries and requests for additional information for this post can be made to: Dr Leon Barron leon.barron@imperial.ac.uk

Applications

Interested candidates should apply by emailing the following documents to Valentina Lotti valentina.lotti@imperial.ac.uk :

1. An up-to-date CV.
2. A completed Application form for the position available here (additional application to the doctoral programme will be required for the successful candidate).
3. Contact details for 2 referees, at least one of which should be a recent academic referee.

Should you have any queries regarding the application process please contact: Ms Valentina Lotti valentina.lotti@imperial.ac.uk

Deadline date: 31st July 2021

Start Date: 2nd October, 2021