Postgraduate Students
One of the Maurice Wilkins Centre's goals is to support talented postgraduate students throughout New Zealand, whose work may help find new ways to tackle major human diseases.
The multidisciplinary and collaborative nature of Maurice Wilkins Centre research provides an excellent training environment for the young scientists and students who are our future science leaders. Emerging scientists like these are invited to join the Centre as affiliate investigators.
Postgraduate student support
The Centre supports a large cohort of PhD and MSc students within its associated research groups by providing funds for stipends, working expenses and travel, as well as opportunities to access specialised research equipment and facilities. Its students work on cutting-edge scientific projects, from developing new drugs for immunosuppression or tuberculosis, to mapping genes involved in cancer. The Maurice Wilkins Centre provided full or partial scholarships for over 40 PhD students during 2015 - 2021.
We periodically have PhD and MSc projects with scholarships available. These could be based at any of our collaborating tertiary institutions across New Zealand.
If you are interested in postgraduate study with the Maurice Wilkins Centre please send an expression of interest to maurice-wilkins-centre@auckland.ac.nz including;
- a brief statement outlining your motivation to do postgraduate study and the research area/s in which you are most interested
- your CV
- an up to date academic transcript
After receipt of your expression of interest you will be advised of any current postgraduate opportunities within the Centre.
Current opportunities
PhD opportunity in cancer immunometabolism
Tēnā koutou katoa, the cancer immunometabolism team at FMHS is seeking a PhD candidate keen to contribute to a Marsden/AMRF project that investigates a new strategy for arresting immunosuppressive tryptophan catabolism and potentiating cancer immunotherapy. The project aims to establish a mouse tumour model harbouring an inactivated tryptophan catabolism enzyme, and use the model to test if the inactive enzyme impacts tumour immunity, metabolism, growth and immunotherapy response. The candidate will utilise techniques including genome editing, transcriptome quantitation, mass spectrometry, immune cell phenotyping by flow cytometry and high-content imaging. The project will primarily take place at Waipapa Taumata Rau’s Auckland Cancer Society Research Centre, FMHS (Grafton campus) and School of Biological Sciences (City campus).
If this research piques your interest, please contact the PI (Petr Tomek, p.tomek@auckland.ac.nz) and enclose your CV and academic transcript. Please share this opportunity with anybody who might be interested.