Vacancies

Vacancies and career opportunities

Jez Guggenheim // Job description:

ESR (PhD Student)
High myopia is a leading cause of visual impairment worldwide. Both genetic and environmental factors are known to be important determinants of refractive error. The main aim of this project will be to examine, for the first time, the genetics of susceptibility to environmentally-induced myopia in a model organism. To achieve this, a selective breeding experiment will be carried out, selecting for high- and low-susceptibility to myopia. Additionally, the ESR will also contribute to ongoing experiments to map genes (quantitative trait loci) controlling eye size and shape. To be eligible for this Fellowship, applicants should have a degree or MSc in either genetics, optometry, ophthalmology or medicine. The ESR will gain experience in several different aspects of research, including ocular phenotyping, molecular genetics, statistical genetics and QTL mapping.

ER (Post Doc)
High myopia is characterised by excessive elongation of the eye during post-natal development, which leads to an increased risk of retinal detachment, retinal degeneration, and vision loss. Ocular coherence tomography (OCT) is a non-contact method capable of quantifying optical distances in the eye with extremely high axial resolution. In recent years frequency domain (FD) optical coherence tomography in the field of biological and medical imaging has shown that imaging sensitivity and thereby imaging speed can be improved by a factor of more than 100, compared to preceding time domain techniques. Due to technological developments like fast, high resolution cameras and ultrafast tuneable lasers with extremely narrow line width, FD methods are very likely to significantly improve optical biometry in terms of speed and reproducibility. This project will exploit the latest advances in frequency-domain OCT to develop improved instrumentation for precise and reproducible measurement of ocular component dimensions in model organisms. The fellowship will be based in the School of Optometry & Vision Sciences, under the direction of Dr Jez Guggenheim, Dr Boris Povazay and Prof. Wolfgang Drexler (Myopia Research laboratory and Biomedical Imaging Group).

myeuropia0049 7071 2980739
European training in myopia researchfrank.schaeffel@uni-tuebingen.de