Description
The skin microbiome is a key component of barrier immunity and may influence inflammatory skin disease, wound healing, burns, skin transplantation and treatment response. This project investigates how microbial communities and microbial activity interact with host immune and barrier pathways in dermatology, using high-resolution microbiome and multi-omics datasets to identify microbial signatures, host–microbe interactions and clinically relevant biomarkers.
Techniques include skin swab or biopsy processing, DNA/RNA extraction, 16S rRNA sequencing, shotgun metagenomics, metatranscriptomics, microbiome bioinformatics, ecological statistics, differential abundance analysis and integration with clinical and host molecular data. This project is mainly bioinformatics-based; coding experience in R is preferred.
Essential criteria:
Minimum entry requirements can be found here: https://www.monash.edu/admissions/entry-requirements/minimum
Keywords
dermatology; skin immunology; cutaneous biology; barrier immunity; inflammatory skin disease; atopic dermatitis; skin microbiome; ; cutaneous microbiome; host–microbe interactions; single-cell; spatial transcriptomics; epigenomics; transcriptomics; metagenomics; multi-omics; R programming; bioinformatics; computational immunology; systems biology
School
School of Translational Medicine » Immunology and Pathology
Available options
PhD/Doctorate
Masters by research
Honours
BMedSc(Hons)
Joint PhD/Exchange Program
Time commitment
Full-time
Top-up scholarship funding available
No
Physical location
Alfred
Co-supervisors
Prof
Johannes Kern