The Swammerdam Institute for Life Sciences (SILS) has a vacancy for a PhD Neuroscience - Blood-Brain Barrier.

Project description

Project title: The role of the blood-brain barrier during aging in epilepsy.

We hypothesize that age-associated cerebrovascular changes, including perivascular inflammation and amyloid accumulation, play an essential role in progressive blood-brain barrier dysfunction and contribute significantly to epileptogenesis and cognitive decline. In this project we will test this hypothesis in experimental animal models and validate our findings using resected brain tissue from elderly patients with epilepsy using electrophysiological, molecular, pharmacological and other neurobiological tools (e.g. EEG, immunohistochemistry, PCR, cell culturing, behavioural analysis). The project is focused on mechanisms of epileptogenesis and is partially funded by the Dutch Epilepsy Foundation.

You are highly motivated and have a strong academic record holding a Master's degree in Neuroscience (or equivalent). You have strong analytical skills and are an experimental talent. A license to work with animals and experience with electrophysiology and tissue culturing is an advantage.

Fixed-term contract: Four years.

The full-time appointment will be on a temporary basis for a maximum period of four years (18 months plus a further 30 months after a positive performance evaluation) and should lead to a dissertation (PhD thesis). An educational plan will be drafted that includes attendance of courses and (international) meetings. Based on a full-time appointment (38 hours per week) the gross monthly salary will range from €2,325 in the first year to €2,972 in the final year, according to the Dutch salary scales for PhD candidates. This is excl. 8% holiday allowance and 8,3% end of year bonus. The Collective Labour Agreement of Dutch Universities applies.

Are you curious about our extensive package of secondary employment benefits? Then find out more about working at the Faculty of Science.

University of Amsterdam

With over 5,000 employees, 30,000 students and a budget of more than 600 million euros, the University of Amsterdam (UvA) is an intellectual hub within the Netherlands. Teaching and research at the UvA are conducted within seven faculties: Humanities, Social and Behavioural Sciences, Economics and Business, Law, Science, Medicine and Dentistry. Housed on four city campuses in or near the heart of Amsterdam, where disciplines come together and interact, the faculties have close links with thousands of researchers and hundreds of institutions at home and abroad.  

The UvA’s students and employees are independent thinkers, competent rebels who dare to question dogmas and aren’t satisfied with easy answers and standard solutions. To work at the UvA is to work in an independent, creative, innovative and international climate characterised by an open atmosphere and a genuine engagement with the city of Amsterdam and society.

Faculty of Science – Institute for Logic, Language and Computation

The Faculty of Science has a student body of around 6,500, as well as 1,600 members of staff working in education, research or support services. Researchers and students at the Faculty of Science are fascinated by every aspect of how the world works, be it elementary particles, the birth of the universe or the functioning of the brain.

The approximately 230 scientists and staff members of the Swammerdam Institute for Life Sciences (SILS) work in 16 research groups that perform excellent research, centred on four themes:

1. Cell & Systems Biology;
2. Neurosciences;
3. Microbiology and
4. Green Life Sciences.

The research group Cellular and Computational Neuroscience is part of the SILS Neuroscience theme and investigates the regulation of neuronal excitability and plasticity at the membrane, cellular and network level using electrophysiological, pharmacological and molecular techniques.