Phylogenomics Lab

Two open Marie Curie PhD positions (CONTRA ITN)  in computational cancer evolution at our lab. Please apply!

  
ESR 11: Estimation of tumour growth rates from NGS data
Understanding the process of tumour growth is fundamental for many aspects of cancer biology. In this ESR project we will develop methods for the estimation of growth rates from single-cell and bulk NGS data. The main complication foreseen is that different selective regimes and neutral demographics can be easily confounded in particular considering the lack of genetic recombination.

ESR 12: Mutational patterns and models within tumours
Cancer data shows distinct genomic mutation rates that often are context-dependent and can be specific of distinct cancer types (“mutational signatures”). In this project we will try to understand in more detail how and which point mutations accumulate in cancer genomes within single patients, and using both single-cell and bulk NGS data. In this context, we will explore different models and their statistical fit in time and space, in relationship to cancer subtypes and progression, in bulk and single-cell NGS data.

CONTRA is an EU funded Innovative Training Network consisting of 8 principal investigators from equally many major European universities (see below) as well as partners from pharmaceutical, biotech-start up, and software development companies. CONTRA will hire 15 PhD students, each located and supervised at one of the participating universities. CONTRA will provide training in computational cancer research and professional software development, for analysis of novel experimental data including but not limited to single-cell genomics data.