Post Type: PhD Studentship (Funded) | Faculty/PSG: Engineering & the Environment | Division/Prof Service: Engineering Sciences Unit (ESU) | Section: Electro-Mechanical Research Group | Location: Highfield Campus | Post Type: Full Time | Closing Date: 01 Mar 2016 |
Project Reference: EngSci-ELM-124
Project Themes: Bioengineering and human factors, Fluid Dynamics, Materials and Surface Engineering.
Osteoarthritis (OA) affects 8.5 million in the UK and worldwide an estimated 9.6% of men and 18% of women ≥60 years have symptomatic OA. To improve treatment options considerable attention has been given to tissue engineering living transplantable cartilage using autologous stem cells from the bone marrow stroma. Despite its promise, reliably achieving stable cartilage formation is a persistent challenge confronting the field due to an inadequate understanding of the environmental factors that stimulate stem cell cartilage formation.
This PhD will explore the potential to address these challenges by combining novel clay nanoparticle hydrogels with droplet microfluidics. Droplet microfluidics offers a high throughput approach to encapsulating componentssuch as single cells and biochemical agents – for example growth factors and extracellular matrix (ECM) molecules – within discrete micro-sized droplets by employing a panel of precisely defined engineering techniques at the micro-scale. The combination of this powerful engineering technology with the unique ability of clay gels to bind mixed-in biochemical additives will be used to define and sustain biochemically-tuned micro-environments to promote robust chondrogenesis of bone marrow stromal stem cells.
The PhD student will fabricate and test microfluidic devices for the encapsulation, culture and fluorescent based sorting of bone marrow stem cells and analyse responses using a range molecular and imaging techniques. We are looking for outstanding engineering or biochemical/biomedical graduates with confidence to work across disciplines.
You will be working in thriving interdisciplinary contexts between the Institute for Life Sciences Hybrid Biodevices group (http://www.southampton.ac.uk/ifls/research/ifls/hybridbiodevices.page) and the Centre for Human Development, Stem Cells and Regenerative Medicine (http://www.southampton.ac.uk/chdscr/), under the supervision of Dr Xize Niu http://www.southampton.ac.uk/ifls/about/staff/xn1y10.page) Dr Jon Dawson (http://www.southampton.ac.uk/medicine/about/staff/jid.page) and Dr Rahul Tare (http://www.southampton.ac.uk/medicine/about/staff/rt2.page).
If you wish to discuss any details of the project informally, please contact Xize Niu, FEE, Email: x.niu@soton.ac.uk or Jonathan Dawson, Bone and Joint research group, Email: jid@soton.ac.uk
To apply please use the following link http://www.southampton.ac.uk/engineering/postgraduate/research_degrees/apply.page? and select Faculty of Engineering and the Environment.