The UK has been a world leader in medical imaging since the 1960s, including the groundbreaking development of MRI led by Sir Peter Mansfield in Nottingham, enabling major advances in our knowledge about in vivo functional anatomy of whole organs and their substructures, especially the brain and as a non-invasive diagnostic tool.

Advanced imaging modalities have been crucial aids to our fundamental scientific understanding of cellular and molecular processes underlying biological function and disease. Research projects and training in this theme will demonstrate that advances in knowledge are not just a matter of having access to state-of-the-art technologies, but require an interdisciplinary combination of technological expertise and biological/medical knowledge to formulate answerable questions and to interpret the results.

Applications are invited from highly motivated and enthusiastic candidates for an MRC-funded PhD studentship aimed at identifying new therapeutic approaches to malaria.

Plasmodium, the causative agent of malaria, leads to 200 million cases and kills more than half a million people annually. Measures to control exposure to the mosquito vector have met with limited success and resistance to current drugs is emerging rapidly. This project will explore the roles of four NEK kinases expressed by the parasite and test their potential as novel therapeutic targets for malaria.

The objectives are to:

• define the subcellular localisation of NEKs during the parasite life cycle using advanced imaging techniques;
• use tagged NEK transgenic lines and mass spectrometry to identify interacting partners; and
• study the function of NEKs in parasite proliferation using conditional gene targeting in cell and animal models.

Applications are invited from highly motivated, creative and committed candidate to the above role to investigate, and disseminate findings on a project funded by the BBSRC entitled Molecular and Cellular Dissection of Kinesin motor in Plasmodium in the group led by Professor Rita Tewari https://tewarilab.co.uk/.