PhD position (Ageing & Disease; Computational Biology): curAIheart – AI-based evaluation of echocardiographic image data considering high dimensional clinical data (m/f/d)

Thinking of doing your PhD in the Life Sciences? The International PhD Programme (IPP) on Gene Regulation, Epigenetics & Genome Stability is offering talented students the chance to work at the cutting edge of research. As an IPP PhD student, you will join a community of exceptional scientists working on diverse topics ranging from how organisms age or how our DNA is repaired, to how epigenetics regulates cellular identity or neural memory.

Activities and responsibilities:
In the fields of “Ageing & Disease” and “Computational Biology”, the research group of Philipp Wild and Jürgen Prochaska offers the following PhD position in the curATime clusters4future initiative:

Echocardiography is a time-consuming, clinically established procedure for determining structural and functional parameters of the heart, which play a crucial role in the classification and risk assessment of patients with cardiovascular diseases. The measurements used in clinical routine today are based on visual changes that can be detected by the human eye in recorded video loops. Newer parameters, such as “global longitudinal strain” (GLS), capture information that is not accessible to the human eye via utilizing image-tracking techniques that allow improved risk stratification of different cardiac patients. However, these new metrics require preselected region of interest. Advances in computational power have enabled the use of machine learning methods, such as Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs), to analyze medical data.

As part of the large portfolio of clinical studies (including Gutenberg Health Study, MyoVasc) of the Clinical Epidemiology and Systems Medicine (PI: Prof. Dr. Philipp Wild), >20.000 participants underwent extensive deep clinical phenotyping in a highly standardized manner at the University Medical Center Mainz, resulting in a unique and comprehensive dataset. This multi-petabyte dataset includes multi-omics data with state-of-the-art 2D and 3D cardiovascular ultrasound phenotyping. In the curAIheart project, researchers use this unique basis to develop a novel AI-based pipeline for automated echocardiographic image analysis and subsequent biomedical exploitation for translational research in the field of atherothrombosis.

PhD project: “curAIheart”
This project is part of “CurATime – Cluster for Atherothrombosis and Individualized Medicine” (www.curatime.org), a research cluster recently funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) for €15 million for the first 3-year funding period. The goal of the PhD project is to develop innovative technologies and pipelines for the analysis of biodata on cardiac function and structure and to integrate this novel pipeline in a systems medicine oriented approach for biomedical research on the development and progression of atherothrombosis. As part of this patient-oriented translational research project your tasks would include:
• In close collaboration with Institute for Informatics (Prof. Stefan Kramer, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz) you will be developing deep learning models for a novel echocardiographic pipeline
• Facilitating the development of methods that can explain the predictions of a model at the individual and dataset level.
• You will explore the complex interplay between cardiac structure and function across the span of early and late prevention of atherothrombosis by integrating multi-omics data for generation of an improved disease understanding.

The candidate will be integrated in a friendly, professional and highly multidisciplinary team, comprising clinicians, epidemiologists, bioinformaticians, biostatisticians, as well as biologists and biochemists. Specific competences and supervisors are present to support the PhD candidate. Within the curAIheart project, the candidate will additionally interact with experts in the fields of artificial intelligence (Institute for Informatics, University of Mainz and DFKI, German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence), experimental research (Center for Thrombosis and Hemostasis Mainz) and biotechnology (TRON/BioNTech).

If you are interested in this project, please select Wild (curAIheart) as your group preference in the IPP application platform.

What we offer:
• Exciting, interdisciplinary projects in a fully international environment, with English as our working language
• Advanced training in scientific techniques and professional skills
• Access to our state-of-the-art Core Facilities and their technical expertise
• Fully funded positions with financing until the completion of your thesis
• A lively community of more than 190 PhD students from 44 different countries

Requirements:
Are you an ambitious, young scientist looking to push the boundaries of science while interacting with colleagues from multiple disciplines and cultures? Then the IPP is your opportunity to give your scientific career a flying start!
All you need is:
• Master or equivalent
• Interactive personality & good command of English
• 2 letters of reference

For more details on the projects offered and how to apply via our online form, please visit https://www.imb.de/phd

The deadline for applications is 19 November 2022. Interviews will take place on-site in Mainz 16-18 January 2023.
Starting date: 1 March 2023 – 1 July 2023