The below opportunities are for BioMed 2 students. If you are interested in one of the placements, please contact the DTP for more information: GW4BioMed@cardiff.ac.uk.
| Organization / Company | Number of Placements | Placement Description |
| Wolfson Centre | One | Why does ADHD lead to depression in young people? Depression is a common mental health condition that typically develops during adolescence or young adulthood. Young people with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) are estimated to be more than five-times as likely to experience depression than those without. Depression in those with ADHD is especially serious – for example, with a higher risk of suicide compared to either ADHD or depression alone. To better help these young people, we need to understand why ADHD can lead to depression. This project will use existing data from the UK general population with detailed information collected across childhood, adolescence and young adulthood, including measures of ADHD, depression and factors that may link the two. Depending on the student’s interest it can examine clinical, cognitive or interpersonal factors that may contribute to the link between ADHD and depression. |
| Wolfson Centre | One | Depression in young people with rare genetic and neurodevelopmental conditions Neurodevelopmental Copy Number Variants (ND CNVs) are large changes in the DNA that are associated with increased risk of certain neurodevelopmental and psychiatric conditions, such as autism spectrum disorder (ASD). A key route into early-onset depression is via neurodevelopmental difficulties, however depression in neurodiverse young people may be masked by other symptoms, neurodevelopmental features, and cognitive difficulties. Currently, little is known about whether risk factors, symptoms, and treatment response in depression differs in individuals with and without rare genetic and neurodevelopmental conditions. This project aims to investigate the phenotypic presentation of depression in the context of ASD and ND CNV carrier status, and will use data from longitudinal population cohorts to explore this aim. |
| NCMH Centre | One | The student will work within the National Centre for Mental Health (NCMH). NCMH is an award-winning biomedical research centre with the central aim to improve the mental health and wellbeing of the people of Wales. The student will work on NCMH’s Cardiff ONline Cognitive Assessment (CONCA) project, which aims to examine the impact of mental illness on memory, concentration and problem-solving skills (cognition) using a new online cognitive assessment. Impairments in cognition have been detected in a range of psychiatric disorders, including schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, depression and anxiety. These impairments impact patients’ daily functioning and are not alleviated by current treatments. However, the nature and degree of cognitive impairments across different psychiatric disorders remains poorly understood. For this project, the student will perform analyses of data from over 1000 participants with psychiatric disorders to address key research questions. The placement will be flexible in that the student will be free to conduct analyses that would support their own PhD or complete a standalone project to gain experience in a new area of research. |
| NCMH Centre | One | Student will be part of the reproductive mental health programme. There are 4 themes the student can choose from: – Postpartum psychosis – Gender and sex differences in bipolar disorder – Impact of menstruation on mental health – Impact of menopause on psychiatrice disorder The projects are dry lab and based on the largest available datasets in the world on the respective topics. The student will need to help with data mangaement, cleaning and run some basic analyses. Basic knowledge of R programming is necessary. Data for all projects are already collected and ethical approval is in place. |
| ONS | Probably one | Will depend on what the ONS are doing at the time along with the student’s interests. |
| Mary Lyons Centre | Two / three | Lab based and/or animal based. |
| Merck & Co | ||
| Cambridge Cognition | One / two | Data analysis and may have rotations through different parts of the company. |
| BBI Solutions | ||
| Office for National Statistics | One | Data science skills required |
| Environment Platform Wales | Various | For more information, visit: https://epwales.org.uk/doctoral-training/ |