Masters Research Opportunities
We host students on a variety of different master's programmes including the MPhil by research, Part III Systems Biology, Computational Biology MPhil, and visiting master's students. The duration of the research project will vary by programme. For the MPhil by research, your research will last one full year. For Part III Systems Biology and the Computational Biology MPhil, the research project will last a portion of the year and work alongside taught courses. For each of these programmes, we will work with you to design a research project that excites you and puts you at the forefront of one of our research areas.
Mentorship and career development
Master's degrees can be a time of transition in your career. Their one-year duration often means that it's time to start thinking about PhD applications or job applications quite soon after joining the lab. We know this, and we're ready to provide you with any career support you need early in the academic year. For students who are interested in applying to PhD programmes, we provide help with planning and writing your applications as well as practice interviews so you can put your best foot forward in the selection process.
Meet some of our current and former masters students
What our masters students have built
The replication timing programme of malaria parasites
DNA replication timing refers to the temporal order in which different regions of the genome replicate, and it's one of the most important measures of DNA replication dynamics. We came up with a way to measure DNA replication timing in malaria parasites, revealing this information for the first time.
How DNA replication changes across evolutionary time
We're using AI and high-throughput sequencing technologies at scale to investigate how and why different organisms have evolved distinct DNA replication strategies over evolutionary time, with the goal of uncovering the pressures that have shaped these patterns.
How and when to apply
We recruit master's students from a wide breadth of fields including zoology, biochemistry, and mathematics. It is not necessary to have done a quantitative undergraduate degree to do a master's degree with us, though we do request that candidates have at least some programming experience in any language.
Students enrolled in Part III Systems Biology or the Computational Biology MPhil should get in touch during the project selection period. Students interested in an MPhil in Biological Sciences should get in touch well ahead of the funding deadline that takes place in early January. Prospective MPhil students that wish to pursue another funding source outside of the university's schemes will need to get in touch ahead of the overall course deadline in late April.
Interested students should Email Michael Boemo with a recent CV, a brief description of their academic background, and a brief description of their motivation for joining the lab. Students are very strongly encouraged to do this before submitting an application via the university portal. Those who apply via the university website without discussing a possible project with us beforehand are unlikely to be successful.