Two Fully-funded PhD studentships for UK/ EU Students (With Stipends) (Funding: ERC)
Two PhD Studentships on Designing Food Structure to Target Oro-sensory Satiety: Addressing Global Obesity Challenges
Project Description
Recent public health concerns about food-linked diseases, such as obesity have raised considerable challenges to design healthier foods with a focus on designing reduced-fat or fat-free foods that are sensorially appealing. Furthermore, to directly promote weight management in population, there is an immense need for designing such foods with satiety-enhancing properties that terminate appetite for longer periods after consumption. Therefore, these two PhD students will be joining a dynamic and multidisciplinary research team of postdocs and other PhD Students at Sarkar Lab, unravelling exciting science behind creating sensorially stimulating and satiety-enhancing foods using hydrogels as model foods.
Specifically, these two projects funded by European Research Council (ERC) will look at the following aspects:
PhD Project 1 - Relating Food Structure to Sensory Perception:
This project will establish fundamental understanding on the impact of microstructural, rheological, tribological aspects of gels (as model foods) during oral processing using in vitro methods and relate with sensory perceptions. During the PhD, the student would collaborate with a academics in School of Psychology and will receive training on using a variety of instrumental colloidal techniques (rheometer, tribometer, confocal microscopy, light scattering), sensory trials (trained and untrained panel. statistics) and soft skills (e.g. oral/ poster presentations at national and international conferences, writing research papers).
PhD Project 2 - Relating Food Structure to Satiety:
This project will establish fundamental understanding of breakdown aspects of gels (as model foods) in oral regime (lubrication aspects) and its impact on satiety perception (hunger, food intake, gut hormones). During the PhD, the student will collaborate with academics in School of Psychology and would receive training on doing satiety trials (human interventions), lab skills (food intake measurements, gut hormone assays) and soft skills (e.g. oral/ poster presentations at national and international conferences, writing research papers).
Funding Notes
These two doctoral studentships are fully funded by ERC (European Research Council) Grant and covers the full cost of UK/EU tuition fees, research costs, travel costs to national and international conferences as well as an annual stipend of £14,553. This studentship is open only to UK/ EU fee-status students only.