PhD Position: Experimental Modeling of the Photodynamic Therapy, Universite Henri Poincare, Nancy, France

Photodynamic therapy (PDT) is an emerging therapy for displastic tissues such as cancers. This therapy involves selective uptake and retention of a photosensitive drug (photosensitiser, PS) in a tumour, followed by irradiation with light at an appropriate wavelength. The activated photosensitiser is thought to produce singlet oxygen at high doses and thereby to initiate apoptotic and necrotic death of tumour. PDT is a dynamic biomedical process. The main objective of this PhD thesis is the determination of a mathematical model of PDT from experimental data. Two kinds of PDT models are required:

1. an in-vitro parametric model for comparing the PDT effectiveness of photosensitizers on a given cancer cell lign;
2. an in-vivo parametric model for improving effectiveness of the implicit dosimetry approach in PDT.

This subject mainly deals with system identification and experimental modeling techniques, and their application to a biomedical process. Several aspects of system identification are concerned: model structure selection, parameter identifiability, model reduction, continuous-time model identification, parameter estimation and parameter uncertainty.

Offer one 3-year PhD scholarship by the French Government (Ministère à l’Enseignement Supérieur et à la Recherche), see: http://dr.education.fr/Alloc_doc/ and click on ‘Allocation de Recherche’ Main requirements : Master of Science received in 2006, age < 25.

Further requirements:

• Interests in experimental and applied research.
• Qualified candidates have a university degree (Master of Science) in applied physics, signals and systems, computer science, or system control. Knowledge in biology is not necessary but would be appreciated.

If you are interested, please send a CV, a list of references, transcript record of M.Sc education, a summary of your M.Sc thesis and a cover letter stating your motivation to thierry.bastogne@cran.uhp-nancy.fr or :

Dr. T. Bastogne
Universite Henri Poincare, Nancy 1
Centre de Recherche en Automatique de Nancy
CNRS-INPL-UHP UMR 7039, BP 239
F-54506 Vandoeuvre-les-Nancy Cedex, France
Applications deadline: 31 May 2006