This project offers an exciting opportunity for a high-calibre PhD studentto work on interdisciplinary research in Cardiff School of Mathematics andCardiff School of Medicine in the area of medical genetics.

With the availability of fast genotyping methods and genomic databases, thesearch for statistical association of single nucleotide polymorphisms with adisease has become an important methodology in medical genetics. However,even fairly rare genotyping errors can lead to spurious association resultsand loss of test power. Building on the student’s skills in mathematicaland/or stochastic analysis, the project will follow on from a recent studywhich has identified the diffusion process on the space of genotypedistributions generated by genotyping errors and an underlying tensorproduct structure, and invariant subsets in the case of an allele-basederror model. The intended research outcomes are an analytical description ofthe resulting type-I errors and test power, as well as a comprehensive studyand classification of the diffusion process for the general error model.

The application of mathematics in medicine is an area of growing importanceand potential benefit. These results, while of a mathematical nature, willbe highly relevant to practical medical genetics, as they provide a generaloverview of the situations in which genotyping error is either critical orinnocuous.

This studentship is available under Cardiff University’s Richard WhippStudentships Scheme. It provides funding for three years, commencing session2006/7. For each of the three years, the University will meet the costs ofthe National Minimum Doctoral Stipend and the Cardiff fee at the home/EUrate (although non-EU applicants are also welcome to apply).

To discuss this project further, please contact:
Dr K M Schmidt
Email: SchmidtKM@cardiff.ac.uk
Telephone: 029 2087 6778

The closing date for applications is 30 June 2006. Application forms areavailable on our website at www.cardiff.ac.uk/postgraduate/pgapply