PhD Student Neuroscience - Data analysis (w/m/d)

The University Medical Center Göttingen (UMG) is a tertiary care center and offers excellent opportunities for scientific and personal development. With more than 7,900 employees working in over 65 departments and facilities, the UMG combines high-quality patient care with outstanding research and modern teaching. Göttingen, the “City of Science-, hosts a vibrant network of research institutions and provides an attractive and interdisciplinary academic environment.

The research group Translational Neuroinflammation, led by Prof. Martin Weber, focuses on understanding pathological and immunological mechanisms underlying inflammatory diseases of the central nervous system (CNS). The group investigates autoimmune and neuroinflammatory disorders, with a strong translational link between experimental models and clinical research.

Project description:

Autoimmune encephalitides represent a rapidly emerging and highly dynamic field in neuroimmunology, in which antibodies directly target neuronal and synaptic proteins, leading to severe neuropsychiatric and neurological symptoms. Among these disorders, anti-NMDAR encephalitis is one of the most frequent and clinically relevant antibody-mediated encephalitides. Despite major clinical advances, the immunological mechanisms that initiate and sustain disease remain largely unknown.

This PhD project aims to address these open questions by focusing on the role of antigen-presenting cells in anti-NMDAR encephalitis. Using a novel active immunization mouse model, which uniquely reproduces key features of the human disease this project offers the opportunity to study endogenous immune mechanisms that cannot be captured by other models.

By combining in vivo and in vitro approaches, including murine disease models, primary cell cultures, and human samples where applicable, the project will investigate antigen uptake, presentation, and immune cell interactions during disease development. In addition, the project will explore novel therapeutic strategies, including experimental treatments targeting neuroinflammation and demyelination in animal models, with the long-term goal of identifying new approaches for immune modulation and repair in CNS autoimmunity.

This project provides a unique opportunity to work at the forefront of antibody-driven neuroimmunology, bridging basic immunology, experimental neuroscience, and translational research in a rapidly expanding field.