Call for Applications for October 2025 start

Supervisors: Dr Daniela Fecht, Professor Ioanna Tzoulaki, Dr Upasana Tayal

Applications are invited for a BHF CRE & SPH 3-year PhD studentship starting in October 2025 funded jointly by the Imperial BHF Centre of Research Excellence (BHF CRE) and the School of Public Health.

The successful student will join a well-established doctoral training program with bespoke teaching activities, seminars, mentors, workshops and social activities.

The School of Public Health is located in a dedicated building on the White City Campus. The Cardiovascular Sections of the National Heart and Lung Institute, Imperial College, are located within the Main Campus at South Kensington, the Brompton Campus and Hammersmith/White City Campus.

The successful student will have the opportunity to work in state-of-the-art facilities within a highly developed research environment where our ambition is to translate research findings to help those with cardiovascular diseases. All students benefit from a full programme of training in research and transferable skills organised through the Graduate School, the quality of which has been recognised several times at the Times Higher Education (THE) Awards. Students will also benefit from the dedicated training programme offered by the MRC Centre for Environment and Health.

Project summary

Heart disease is one of the leading causes of death and disability in older age in the UK with a significant burden on the NHS. Increasing urbanisation, in combination with an aging population and ever-increasing social differences across the country will lead to even greater burden of heart disease in years to come.

The aim of this project is to analyse the relationship between the built and social environment and heart disease in populations in Great Britain and investigate how this differs between men and women, deprivation and different parts of the country. This project will combine information on the built and social environment, individual lifestyle factors, risk factors of heart disease (such as blood pressure), admission to hospital and death.

Many of these data have already been collected as part of previous studies which will be combined with newly modelled data on environmental factors. Health data will come from an established adult cohort studies with detailed information on lifestyle, biological samples, and disease. The project will i) describe the built and social environment; ii) analyse the separate and joint effects of built and social environment characteristics on heart disease risk factors and outcomes; and iii) analyse the potential different effect across men and women, by deprivation and across different parts of the country.

Understanding how the area we live in impacts on our health is key for politicians and urban planners to specifically target health inequalities, to direct and implement policies, and to design and retrofit built environments to improve the health of residents.

To learn more about the research of the BHF CRE & SPH please visit our websites.

The PhD project will be conducted under the supervision of Dr Daniela Fecht , Professor Ioanna Tzoulaki and Dr Upasana Tayal . The student will be based within the School of Public Health on the White City Campus.

Applicant Requirements

Applicants must:

1.    Hold a first or upper second-class undergraduate honours degree or equivalent in epidemiology, public health, health data analytics, health geography, biostatistics, biomedical sciences or similar subject from a recognised academic institution.

2.    Hold a Masters degree in epidemiology, public health, health data analytics, health geography, biostatistics, biomedical sciences or similar

3.    Have experience in quantitative data analysis, and managing large datasets

4.    Ideally, knowledge of geospatial research methods, including GIS and spatial analysis in R or similar

5.    Satisfy Imperial College and English language requirements.

How to Apply

To apply, please email Jaya Rajamanie ( [email protected] ) with the following documents.

-       Your CV

-       The names and addresses of at least two academic referees.

-       A personal statement of no more than 1,000 words explaining your interest in the project

-       Please ensure that you specify your degree classification for your undergraduate and postgraduate degrees (and attach scanned copies of your certificates if possible).

Selected candidates will get a tour of the relevant campus. Please assume that your application has not been successful if you have not heard from us within a month of the closing date.

Closing date for all applications: 31 March 2025

Interviews will be held in April.