PhD Scholarship in Mood and Immunity in the Elderly: Big Data and Systems Biology

This PhD scholarship focuses on a cross-disciplinary study investigating the relationship between immune biomarkers in blood and depression across different age groups and genders. The research aims to correlate inflammatory status and epigenetic monocyte programming with depression in young and elderly, male and female volunteers. The study proposes that the propensity of immune cells to respond by high cytokine production to environmental challenges is mechanistically associated with mood and particularly depression. The laboratory uses world-class big-data 'omics' analysis of blood immune cells, including RNAseq, epigenetics, multicolour flowcytometry, cell sorting, multiplex cytokine analysis, and classical immunological techniques. The research is co-supervised by Dr Kirsty Wilson and Professor Katie Flanagan (UTAS), and led by Distinguished Professor Magdalena Plebanski. This scholarship provides an opportunity to work at the intersection of immunology, psychology, and bioinformatics to advance understanding of the relationship between the brain, the immune system, and overall human health.