4-Year PhD Scholarship in the Kellett Research Group (AUTOPILOT)

Prof. Andrew Kellett was recently awarded a €2.4 million SFI Research Infrastructure Award for a breakthrough instrument suite called AUTOPILOT—a robotically controlled high-throughput cell characterisation suite for drug discovery (https://sspc.ie/autopilot-automated-high-throughput-analysis-of-cellula…). The AUTOPILOT system is now being installed in the Nano Research Facility (NRF) in DCU and will be operational in the coming months. The system is a breakthrough robotic cell phenotyping suite that can analyse the ability of new therapeutics to target and effectively treat diseases such as cancer. Despite recent advances in our understanding of disease states, aggressive cancers such as triple-negative breast cancer and glioblastoma multiforme remain among the most complex and deadly diseases for which limited treatment options remain. Although much research is attempting to combat this issue, clinical drug failure rates remain high. The AUTOPILOT system is designed to combat this issue, principally by automating the labour-intensive protocols required to screen new drug molecules in the broad range of cell types and under various conditions. When combined with automated complex workflows—including cell imaging, flow cytometry, and time resolved fluorescence—it can transform our understanding of how new therapeutics function at the molecular level.

This is an opportunity to join a fully funded PhD position (4-years) with a focus on high throughput screening, cell biology, synthetic chemistry, and artificial gene-editing technologies. You will work closely with, and initially be trained by, existing members of the Andrew Kellett research group and technical staff within the NRF. You will have the opportunity to collaborate with international partners and researchers funded through Novo Nordisk Foundation, Biodesign Europe, the Irish Research Council Laureate programme, and European training networks to design workflows that analyse new chemotherapeutics and high value gene-editing tools.

As a PhD candidate you will be registered in the structured PhD programme at DCU within the School of Chemical Sciences under the supervision of Professor Andrew Kellett, Dr. Creina Slator, and Dr. Una Prendergast.

• Main areas of expertise/skills training which will be undertaken by the candidate include:
  • High-throughput cell culture techniques, including cell imaging, flow cytometry and time resolved fluorescence.
  • Molecular biology and biophysical analysis to assess the biological activities and target specificity of new chemotherapeutics, including qPCR and nucleic acid sequencing.
  • Nucleic acid click chemistry for the preparation of chemically modified oligonucleotides using solid-phase synthesis and enzymatic protocol.
  • Cell-free assay development for the screening of novel chemotherapeutics including encapsulation efficiency in liposomes and delivery capability.