Additional Summer Placements

See below details of 2 exciting placement opportunities. These studentships will enable undergraduate students with an excellent track record in a scientific discipline, who wish to pursue a future career in scientific research, an opportunity to gain valuable experience of working in a world-class research laboratory within the School of Life Sciences. If your application is successful, you will be provided with a salary payment at the national living wage to work in in a specific laboratory for six to eight weeks across the summer months (June, July, August).

The scheme is open to University of Dundee students and those studying in other UK Universities. However, applicants must have no restrictions on how long they can stay in the UK (e.g. not sponsored on a Tier 4 visa).

Opportunities

Pharmacological Interventions for Fentanyl-Induced Hyperalgesia:
A Systematic Review and Network Meta-Analysis of Preclinical Trials.

Project supervisors: Ms Mia Koponen, Prof Tim Hales, Prof Patrice Forget (University of Aberdeen)

Several interventions have been suggested for the prevention of increased pain sensitivity caused by opioids - a condition called opioid-induced hyperalgesia (OIH). OIH is mostly investigated in postsurgical patients, but it can also affect other people using opioids (those with chronic pain or substance use disorder). Preventing OIH is important as it can contribute to the chronification of pain. It is currently unclear which intervention is the most effective or appropriate in preventing OIH. This project aims to statistically rank the pharmacological interventions for fentanyl-induced hyperalgesia investigated in rats/mice based on their efficacy. Thus, this project will review a part of the extensive literature on OIH prevention and will contribute to guiding this field in planning of future research. A successful completion of this project would provide the student an opportunity to publish the work in a scientific journal as the first author and to present it as a poster in Scottish Pain Research Community Annual Scientific Meeting in the following autumn.

Main skills to be developed: 

• systematic review
• network meta-analysis

No previous experience / skills required.

About supervisors: Ms Koponen is a PhD student at the Chronic Pain Research Group. She is currently researching pharmacoepidemiology of neuropathic pain, but has conducted various projects on pharmacological interventions for opioid-induced hyperalgesia since 2021. Ms Koponen will be the main supervisor in this project. She will meet with the student weekly and is the first point of contact. Prof Hales and Prof Forget have preclinical and clinical expertise on opioid-induced hyperalgesia respectively. They will be consulted for advice and support when necessary.
Email Mia Koponen  for further details/questions.

EPSRC Funded Placement within CeTPD

Project supervisor: Dr William Farnaby

The Centre for Targeted Protein Degradation is a multi-disciplinary research centre within the Dundee School of Life Sciences, focussed on discovering new ways to use small molecules to tackle disease causing proteins. We house scientists working on fundamental academic projects all the way through to translational drug discovery, with interests across a broad set of disease areas including cancer, neurodegeneration and dermatology.

The Farnaby group focuses on using a combination of medicinal chemistry, chemoproteomics and cellular assay development to discover new chemical probes to help our understanding of how to tackle diseases of the brain, including neurodegerative diseases and neuroblastoma.

We are delighted to be able to offer an 8 week summer placement for undergraduate students due to enter their final year of study in Autumn 2024. This is an ideal opportunity for those seeking to gain practical wet-lab research training and to learn about the types of research areas that are available within the school of life sciences. Timing can be flexible between early June and late August and projects, whilst fitting broadly within the areas of medicinal chemistry and cellular assay development, can be tailored to the interests of the student.

BARIToNE: Barley Industrial Training Network

The barley sector is facing two key problems:

• the need to produce high quality barley in a carbon neutral manner with fewer environmental impacts 
• a shortage of highly trained scientists with diverse skillsets and knowledge of the whole barley supply chain. BARIToNE aims to meet both these needs.

The research focus of our partnership therefore is driving down the environmental footprint of primary production while maintaining a sustainable supply of high-quality barley. The legacy of this collaboration between academia and industry will be the highly trained scientists with diverse skillsets and knowledge of the whole barley supply chain.

BARIToNE is funding 40 PhD places over 7 years but if you are an undergraduate with a keen interest in the work we are doing, we would be delighted to offer an 8-week summer placement to give you a taste of what goes on in a research laboratory.