Higher Degree by Research Application Portal

Roughly one to two in every 1,000 Australian babies are born with inherited moderate-to-profound hearing loss, and genomic testing now yields a molecular diagnosis in around half of them. Western Australia has no comprehensive data on how often childhood hearing loss is genetic, or which genes are responsible. This PhD will generate that data at a time where therapeutics for inherited hearing loss are becoming available. You will build and run the variant analysis pipeline for Western Australia’s first paediatric genetic hearing loss cohort in over 100 children with permanent hearing loss recruited through Hearing Australia, sequenced by whole genome sequencing, and compared against an age-matched typically-hearing control group drawn from The ORIGINS Project. You will spend a structured industry placement at the Australian Genome Research Facility on UWA’s campus, learning sequencing and bioinformatics tradecraft from the people who do it at national scale, and you will return to apply it to a clinically deep, WA-specific dataset that does not yet exist anywhere. Experience with audiology is a plus, but can be taught by our audiologists. This work will go directly into developing new therapeutics for Aussie kids with inherited hearing loss, and you will be on the front line here.

Internally funded through the Ear Science Institute Australia

Adj Assoc Prof Christo Bester on christo.bester@earscience.org.au

Molecular genetics, bioinformatics.

Audiology skills preferred, but can be taught.

The Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) is a program of independent, supervised research that is assessed solely on the basis of a thesis, sometimes including a creative work component, that is examined externally. The work presented for a PhD must be a substantial and original contribution to scholarship, demonstrating mastery of the subject of interest as well as an advance in that field of knowledge. 

Visit the course webpage for full details of this course including admission requirements, course rules and the relevant CRICOS code/s.