UK; Unilever PhD Studentship

In order to predict environmental fate of chemicals the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development has established standardised laboratory methods to estimate biodegradation in the environment. However, in many parts of the world, particularly in developing regions, untreated waste water is routinely emitted directly into surface water. This presents a number of difficulties for conventional risk assessments for down-the-drain’ chemicals. An alternative risk assessment model, based on the “impact zone” (IZ) concept, has been proposed for such direct discharge’ conditions. In this model, chemicals are assessed in terms of their potential impact on river recovery processes and in terms of their predicted concentration at the end of an “impact zone”, within which the ecosystem is impacted by other pollutants.

At Unilever a laboratory-based simulation system using a continuous flow river model has been constructed in which microbial biofilms are allowed to develop to simulate natural conditions under which biodegradation takes place. This system allows the behaviour and associated ecological risks of biodegradable chemicals to be assessed under direct discharge conditions.

In this PhD project you will investigate fundamental relationships between microbial biomass density and diversity, system pre-exposure to chemicals and the rate of biodegradation processes. A range of cutting edge molecular community profiling methods will be used, including the use of high throughput sequencing techniques. The results will be used to optimise the continuous river flow model system to provide a more realistic assessment of natural biodegradation processes in laboratory systems.

The student will have the opportunity to spend up to 6 months of the PhD at Unilever’s research and development centre in Bedfordshire.

Further information
This PhD studentship is funded for 3.5 years and carries an annual tax-free maintenance stipend of £15,790. The studentship will start on 5 October 2009 and will be supervised by Dr Gary Bending.

The studentship is funded by Unilever.

Further information can be found on the Warwick HRI website:http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/sci/whri/study/mphilphd/studentships

Please quote job vacancy reference number HRI67-079.

The closing date/time for applications is midnight (British time) at the end of Friday 24 July 2009.