Grants and Fellowships | Scholarship for Nigerians and Africans - Part 126

Medical Research Council Fellowships, Methodology Research, UK

MRC fellowships enable outstanding individuals to undertake challenging projects in excellent research and training environments. An MRC award is there to enable you to do something truly out of the ordinary in training and developing you as a potential research leader.

This Fellowship is open to applicants already working in, or who wish to move into, health related research. It provides up to four years’ funding for multidisciplinary research training into innovative statistical methods and their application in clinical research. Applicants should present not only a challenging research project but also clear and ambitious plans for their development as researchers able to apply advanced skills to an increasingly broad range of problems.

Who can apply?

Applicants should either hold, or expect to receive before the award starts, a doctorate in statistics, biostatistics or a related discipline and less than 5 years post-doctoral experience. However, please note that candidates without medical statistical experience are welcome to apply; provided they specify a training package appropriate to the aims of this fellowship.

At the postdoctoral level, all Fellowships provide the Fellow’s competitive salary and necessary research training costs (e.g. consumables, travel, equipment etc) and other costs allowable under Full Economic Costs (FEC). Any research staff required should be requested and clearly justified but this would be considered exceptional.

The deadline for applications is 4.00pm on Friday 8th October 2010

UTS Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Research Fellowship for International Researcher

The Fellowships are extremely prestigious and highly competitive. Applicants must have an outstanding track record relative to opportunity in order to be short-listed.The Fellowships aim to generate research outcomes that will benefit society, strengthen the research profile of UTS and its areas of research strength and excellence, and equip Fellows for research careers.

In 2011, the Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Research Fellowship Scheme will award Fellowships with the aim of building research capacity in areas of strategic importance to UTS. The number of Fellowships awarded will be dependent on the quality of the candidates and the funding available.

Applicants will have been awarded a research doctoral degree (equivalent to an Australian PhD degree) within 5 years of the closing date. Research doctoral degree candidates whose thesis is under examination at the closing date, and research doctoral degree candidates who will submit their PhD thesis by end of 2010 may also apply. International applications are welcome.

Fellowships are available for a three-year period. A four-year research and teaching option is also available under certain conditions.

Fellows will initially be appointed at Level A, step 4 (A$72,297) or Level B step 1 (A$76,105) per year, under the UTS Academic Staff agreement 2006. Applicants with less than 2 years experience since the award of their PhD should expect to be offered Fellowships at Level A. Project funding of up to $45,000 is also available.

Intending applicants must, in the first instance, contact the Faculty with which they wish to work. They must have a UTS supervisor who must complete a Supervisor’s Statement (doc, 36.5Kb).

Applications must be submitted using the Application Cover Sheet (doc, 50.5Kb) and including the required supporting documents in accordance with the Scheme Guidelines and Instructions for Applicants (doc, 230Kb).

All enquiries about the UTS Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Research Fellowship Scheme should be addressed to:
Helen Thomson
Manager, Research Development
Research and Innovation Office
University of Technology, Sydney
E: Helen.Thomson@uts.edu.au
T: 61 2 9514 9616
F: 61 2 9514 1244

Closing Date: 26 August 2010

PhD Researcher for “Heterogeneity in Studies with Discrete-Time Survival Endpoints: Implications for Optimal Designs and Statistical Power Analysis”, Netherlands

This project is funded by a VIDI grant from the Netherlands’ Organization for Scientific Research (NWO). The PhD student will spend time on doing research, following mathematics and statistics courses of IOPS and other institutes, and spend about 10% of the time on teaching courses at the BSc level. The PhD student will be supervised by Dr M. Moerbeek.

The aim of trials on event occurrence is to study if and when a particular event, such as onset of daily smoking or entry into parenthood, occurs. The timing of events may be in thin and precise units or in coarser intervals. In the second case one does not know the exact timing of the event; one only knows that it occurred within a particular time interval. Such discrete-time survival data are typically analyzed on basis of a generalized linear model, such as a logistic regression model.

The main research question in any trial is whether an experimental treatment differs from a control with respect some outcome variable. As many covariates or background variables, such as age and socio-economic status, may have an effect on the outcome they should be measured and included in the statistical model. Ignoring such variables may result in biased estimates of the treatment effect estimator and hence incorrect conclusions with respect to the effect of treatment.

The aim of this project is to investigate to what extent such biases occur and how they can be corrected for in the statistical model. We will also focus on the optimal design of trials with covariates and discrete-time survival data. The PhD student will write papers in international scientific journals, contribute to international conferences and write a PhD thesis.

Qualifications:

  • MSc in applied statistics, biometrics, biostatistics, econometrics, psychometrics or a related field with a solid background in applied statistics.
  • Applicants should be familiar with the generalised linear model, matrix algebra, research designs and have some experience with computer programming.
  • The applicant communicates easily in English, both verbally and in writing.
  • The starting date is January 2011.

    Contact Person: ms. Dr M. Moerbeek (supervisor), phone (+31) 30 253 1450,
    email: M.Moerbeek@uu.nl, website: http://www.fss.uu.nl/ms/moerbeek.

    How to apply:

    Please send your written application, with motivation, curriculum vitae, list of courses and grades and contact information of two referees before August 25th, 2010 and specifying vacancy number 691021.

    Applications can be emailed to: PenO.FSW@uu.nl or be sent to:
    Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences, Personnel Department, attn. Mr. M. Azdoufal, P.O Box 80140, 3508 TC Utrecht, The Netherlands.