The Developmental Neurobiology and Computational Biology & Bioinformatics research groups located at the UCLouvain, in Brussels, Belgium are looking for a highly motivated student interested in a PhD program in neuro-oncology. The position is funded for 2 years (renewable one time).

The main purpose of research in the Developmental Neurobiology laboratory is to understand the mechanisms underlying the development and disease of the nervous system, with emphasis on the role of planar cell polarity (PCP) and cytoskeleton. The Computational Biology & Bioinformatics group devises novel computational techniques to comprehend high dimensional biology and enable high throughput biomedical research.

The aim of the PhD project is to understand the role of a PCP effector gene in glioblastoma, and its potential implication in chemoresistance. This will be achieved through:

• Molecular characterization of brain tumors in a newly developed mouse model for glioblastoma;
• Analysis of mutations and copy number variations of candidate genes in human glioblastoma samples.

The candidate will conduct bioinformatic analyses of RNA sequencing data, targeted genome sequencing, and The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) data using R and Bioconductor packages. They should ideally have a background/experimence in omics data analysis and experimental neurobiology.