Position title: PhD Project: Whole genome sequencing of circulating tumour DNA as a diagnostic method to help resolve challenging cancer diagnoses

Employer: University of Melbourne

Closing date: 15th January 2022

Brief position description: Defined by the absence of a confirmed cancer type diagnosis, cancer of unknown primary (CUP) is a devastating disease with an exceptionally poor outcome. The Rare Disease Oncogenomics Laboratory at the University of Melbourne Centre for Cancer Research is seeking a PhD student to undertake an exciting project involving development and application of bioinformatic methods for whole genome sequencing analysis of circulating tumour DNA (ctDNA) from the blood of cancer patients. This project will involve expert supervision both within and outside our laboratory as well as leveraging significant resources of the SUPER-NEXT study that is currently deploying clinical whole genome sequencing to CUP patients recruited from 16 sites across Australia. The PhD project will have a strong computational focus involving methods for mutation signature detection and ctDNA fragment analysis. The project is highly translational with the goal to develop a ctDNA diagnostic method ready for deployment to CUP patients in the short to medium term. The candidate will require prior experience with unix-like operating systems, R and/or python programming languages
and working in a high-performance computing environment. A strong background in mathematics or statistics is also highly desirable. The candidate will also require a strong academic record and be competitive for internal or external PhD scholarships.

Job website:

Contact name: Richard Tothill

Contact email: rtothill@unimelb.edu.au