AstraZeneca-Funded Non-Clinical PhD Studentship (Fixed Term): Physics-Guided Representation Learning for Drug Discovery

Applications are invited for a four-year, AstraZeneca-funded PhD studentship in the Department of Pure Mathematics and Mathematical Statistics, commencing in October 2027. The successful candidate will be jointly supervised by Prof Sergio Bacallado (University of Cambridge), Dr Dino Oglic (AstraZeneca), and Dr Jon Paul Janet (AstraZeneca). The studentship offers an opportunity to conduct cutting-edge research at the interface of statistical machine learning, molecular simulation and drug discovery. Project description The project, entitled Physics-Guided Representation Learning from Free Energy Perturbation Data for Affinity Prediction and Candidate Down-Selection , aims to develop novel machine-learning methods for predicting molecular binding affinities and supporting decision-making in drug discovery.