€4million to help interdisciplinary scientists understand disease processes

The University of Dundee has been awarded funding of almost €4million to bridge the gap between the life and physical sciences in order to better understand cardiovascular pathology and diseases such as cancer.

The PHOQUS (PHOtonic tools for Quantitative imaging in tissUeS) project has received a €3.8million (£3.2million) grant from the EU’s FP7 Marie Curie- Innovative Doctoral Programme to further develop state-of-the-art live cell and tissue imaging methodologies and use them to better understand the complex cellular processes underlying embryonic development and disease.

The three-year initiative will train postgraduate students as interdisciplinary scientists at the interface between Physics/Photonics, medicine and life sciences.

The University will recruit 13 PhD fellows for the project, and the successful candidates will work with leading researchers from the Colleges of Life Sciences (CLS), Medicine, Dentistry and Nursing (CMDN) and Art, Science and Engineering (CASE).

 PHOQUS fellows will have access to world-class expertise in life sciences, surgical and image interventional technologies, nanomedicine and photonics at the University, as well as at industrial and academic partners from across Europe.

Project coordinator Professor Kees Weijer from CLS said, “We will train a new generation of exceptional scientists in the life and physical sciences, without the historic barriers that have existed between disciplines.

“The purpose of this is to develop new photonics tools that will feed into the design and development of smaller, more cost effective instruments that can investigate the cellular and molecular dynamics which drive the critical cell behaviours such as division, differentiation and cell movement in order to understand their role in development and disease."