Call for admission to the PhD Courses 2021/22

PhD Courses: call for admission XXXVII cycle 2021/22
Pharmacological Sciences PhD Course 37° cycle 2021/22 
Technical guidelines for the submission of the application form for PhD Courses, 37th series

Deadline: May 12th 2021, 1 pm (CEST)

---

37° cycle PhD Projects:

• Development of innovative therapies for chemotherapy-treated prostate cancer.
  
• In vitro pharmacological characterization of novel GPCR ligands.
  
• Occupational exposure assessment to crystalline silica.
  
• Delayed neurocognitive recovery after breast surgery: incidence and relationship with common intraoperative neuromonitoring data and concentration of propofol infused with targeted controlled infusion (tci) in women with laryngeal mask airway.
  
• Role of multiproteic complex NLRP3 inflammosome and dietary habits in central and peripheral inflammatory processes in Parkinson disease.
  
• Neuropsychopharmacological and neurobiological role of melatonin receptors in neuropsychiatric disorders.
  
• Investigating novel immunotherapy strategies to treat liver  cancer.
  
• Investigating the direct vascular proatherogenic action of ANGPTL3.
  
• Investigating the metabolic dysfunctions associated to atypical antipsychotic drugs using Drosophila melanogaster.
  
• Role of epigenetics in drug addiction.
  
• Alzheimer’s Disease: Microglia as a Therapeutic Target to Reduce Neuroinflammation and Neurodegeneration.

---

Planned Teaching activities:

First year
- Course on "Information Literacy in Pharmacological Sciences"
- Course on "Bio-Statistics"
Second year
- Course on “Academic English for PhD Students”, at Centro Linguistico di Ateneo
- "Advanced Pharmacology" course consisting of 5 modules each: 1) Pharmacokinetics 2) Clinical biochemistry 3) Methods in Molecular Pharmacology 4) Application aspects of clinical research methodology 5) Neuropharmacology.
Third year
- Teaching of "Communicating Science Effectively".
Several seminars (approximately once a month) will also be organized and held by English-speaking scientists.
PhD students are required to attend at least 70% of the training activities offered and pass the evaluation test.

---

The mission of the 3 years PhD Course in Pharmacological Sciences is to prepare new young generation of scientists with a solid background in the field of Molecular Pharmacology, Clinical Pharmacology, Pharmacoepidemiology and Toxicology. To this purposes the PhD scholar program is organized in two parallel curricula:

***************************************************************************************************

Research lines - Molecular and Cellular Pharmacology

- Neuro-degenerative disorders: molecular mechanisms, genetics, and studies of therapeutic interventions
- Autonomic nervous system on bronchial function, new pharmacological agents
- Enteric nervous system and immune system, search for therapeutic targets
- Cardiovascular diseases, aging, gender and pharmacological responses
- Antitumoral compounds and mechanisms in drug resistance
- Metabolomics and lipidomics studies to the identification of new drug targets
- Immune system and search for molecular pharmacological targets
- Pharmacological modulation of chronic inflammatory diseases
- Medicinal plants as source of pharmacological agents
- Phenotyping/genotyping and therapeutic monitoring to develop new diagnostic screening tests
- Pharmacokinetic studies in healthy and disease

Research lines - Pharmacology, Toxicology and Therapeutics

- Critical care therapy. Pain therapies, both intensive and hyperbaric
- Risk prevention and occupational medicine
- Airway inflammation induced by inhaled pollutants
- Environmental toxicology xenobiotics in the urban water cycle
- Development of new environmentally friendly and species-selective pesticides
- Clinical pharmacology and  therapeutic drug monitoring
- Pharmacoepidemiology
- Pharmacoeconomics
- Pharmacovigilance

Students will choose a research project as proposed by members of the teaching staff involved in the Course and they will be supervised by an experienced tutor, with the possibility to add an external tutor.

The PhD programme offers interdisciplinary seminars, and additional training in presentation seminars and workshops ithus preparing doctoral candidates for work in international and multidisciplinary environments.

At the end of three years, students are required to present the PhD thesis describing their experimental work, which will be assessed by a commission of experts. The final dissertation will confer the title of Research Doctor, or Doctor Europaeus if special conditions are met (thesis written in English, research work in another European country for a minimum of 3 months and dissertation at international examination panel).

Contacts:

Nicola Ferri, PhD director, Department of Pharmacological and Pharmaceutical Sciences, University of Padova. Via Marzolo, 5- 35131 Padova, Italy

e-mail nicola.ferri@unipd.it

Daniela Strafella, PhD secretary, Department of Pharmaceutical and Pharmacological Sciences, University of Padova, Via Marzolo, 5, 35131 Padova, Italy
e-mail: daniela.strafella@unipd.it

Calls and Admissions (36th series)

*****************************************************************************************************************************************************
Project CO-Fund 2019
UNIPhD: University of Padova PhD Programme - Eight Century Legacy of Frontier Research and Societal Impact

The PhD Course offers 2 scientific course related to the 2 research topic:

- Topic 1: Biostatistics and Clinic Epidemiology (24 hours) 
- Topic 2: Advanced pharmacology (50 hours)
(optional: The PhD students are required to attend at least 70% of training activities offered and pass the evaluation test)

****************************************************************************************************************************************************