Phylogeny PhDs at University of Glasgow

[Roderic D. M. Page]

Two PhD studentships are available in Rod Page's lab at the
University of Glasgow.

Project 1: Tooling up for the "Tree of Life"
(University of Glasgow funded -- full funding for UK and EU Nationals)
Supervisors: Rod Page and Ela Hunt
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As efforts to reconstruct the tree of life gain momentum, there is a
growing need for phylogenetic databases to support this research.
Amongst the most pressing needs are a curated taxonomy to ensure
consistent naming of organisms in the database, and support for
hierarchical queries using that taxonomy. There is also a need to
store and query across large numbers (many thousands) of trees (e.g.,
find those trees with/without a specified relationship). Developing a
phylogenetic database raises a number of issues about database
design, querying trees and other graphs, and storing diverse kinds of
data. This project will develop methodologies and tools to support
phylogenetic databases. Test data will be provided by the related
project on bird supertrees (see below), and other sources. It would
suit a biologically minded computer scientist, or computationally
literate biologist. An interest in graph theory, algorithms,
databases, and programming would be an advantage.

More details and eligibility:
http://taxonomy.zoology.gla.ac.uk/studentships/tol.html
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Project 2: Bird supertree
(NERC funded -- full funding for UK nationals, limited funding for EU
nationals)
Supervisor: Rod Page
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This project will aim to assemble a supertree for birds from
existing, published phylogenies. The student will do a literature and
database search to locate avian phylogenies, and will then assemble
them into a larger tree. We have successfully tried this method on
petrels and albatrosses (Kennedy and Page, 2002) using software
developed at Glasgow (RadCon). New methods for computing supertrees
have been developed since Kennedy and Page, so as part of the project
the student will compare different methods for constructing
supertrees, and compare these supertree with results based on
sequencing-only studies (supertrees can use sequence trees as well as
other sources of data). In addition to evaluating the methodology,
the project will generate the first large-scale bird phylogeny since
the Sibley and Ahlquist.

More details and eligibility:
http://taxonomy.zoology.gla.ac.uk/studentships/supertree.html

Rod Page

--
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Dr Roderic D. M. Page
Reader in Taxonomy
DEEB, IBLS
Graham Kerr Building
University of Glasgow
Glasgow G12 8QP
United Kingdom


Phone:    +44 141 330 4778
Fax:      +44 141 330 2792
email:    r.page at bio.gla.ac.uk
web:      http://taxonomy.zoology.gla.ac.uk/rod/rod.html
reprints: http://taxonomy.zoology.gla.ac.uk/rod/pubs.html