Learn about GenV: your opportunity to create a healthier future GenV is a research project built by Victorian families for all families. If you join, you will contribute to healthier children, parents, and families in the future.
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Home\About GenV\GenV Students, Fellows & Postdocs\PhD projects Back PhD projects PhD projects Interested? Reach out to supervisors to ask about a project, or to GenV’s Student Coordinator for general enquiries about GenV PhD projects. Shape the future with a GenV PhD Shape the future with a GenV PhDProject description: Want a PhD that makes a difference at population scale? Generation Victoria (GenV), Australia’s largest-ever birth and parent cohort (~125,000 participants), offers exceptional students the chance to tackle big problems in child and adult health, development and wellbeing. GenV PhDs span issue-based areas (eg anxiety, obesity, climate, infection) and technical fields (eg data science, IT build, privacy, AI, biobanking). Students will join expert teams working on GenV’s ‘Pillars of Impact’ or platform/cohort development to design predictive, preventive and equitable solutions. They’ll learn to create, not just use, data by contributing the equivalent of one full-time year to building GenV in areas vital to their PhD and future careers. Ideal for students ready to think big, work collaboratively and drive real-world change at population scale. Email solutionsgenv@mcri.edu.au with your interest or idea – we’ll help find the team for you. Top-up Director’s Scholarships may be available. Supervisors: Prof Melissa Wake (GenV Cohort and Pillars of Impact), Prof Richard Saffery (BioSciences), Prof Sharon Goldfeld (Equity and Policy) The GenSLEEP trial: Improving sleep to reduce cardiovascular and mental health risk at age 5y The GenSLEEP trial: Improving sleep to reduce cardiovascular and mental health risk at age 5yProject description: Short or fragmented sleep is a neglected pillar of cardiovascular (CV) and mental health. Generation Victoria (GenV) provides an unprecedented platform to test scalable early-life interventions at population level. This PhD student will lead GenSLEEP, a pragmatic ‘large simple trial’ embedded in GenV, to evaluate whether a brief nudge to bring forward bedtimes at age 5 can improve sleep and thereby reduce CV and mental health risk. As part of the trial, the student will assist with measuring phenotypic outcomes (BMI z-score, physical activity) in GenV’s Early School Wave and accessing large-scale linked data (school nurse surveys during prep grade, phonics outcomes in Year 1) to generate policy-relevant evidence for prevention. This PhD is for an exceptional student with relevant background (eg clinical, nutrition, activity, sports, public health) and a passion for improving child and population health through real-world trials. Top-up Director’s Scholarship may be available. Supervisors: Prof Melissa Wake, Prof Raghu Lingam GenTWINS: Assessing the relative contributions of heritable and environmental Influences using GenV’s family-based cohort GenTWINS: Assessing the relative contributions of heritable and environmental Influences using GenV’s family-based cohortProject description: Family-based designs are key to understanding causality, particularly in genetic epidemiology. Generation Victoria (GenV) includes over 710 twin pairs, 8 sets of triplets, ~1000 sibling pairs and ~3000 parents of these children – in total, over 6000 family-based participants embedded within Australia’s largest and most diverse whole-population birth and parent cohort (>120,000). This PhD harnesses this rare resource to study the relative genetic and environmental drivers of major childhood outcomes including allergy, infection and growth. By comparing monozygotic twins, dizygotic twins, siblings and singletons, and drawing on rich linked health and other data, the student will generate insights with direct relevance to population health, policy and practice. This PhD would suit exceptional students with an interest in genetic or causal epidemiology, population health and data science. Top-up Director’s Scholarship may be available. Supervisors: Prof Richard Saffery, Dr Katherine Lange, Dr Shuai Li, Dr Jing Wang Child impacts to age 3y of health conditions in pregnancy: Causal pathways in the GenV population cohort Child impacts to age 3y of health conditions in pregnancy: Causal pathways in the GenV population cohortProject description: Maternal physical and mental health in pregnancy shape early life outcomes, but causal pathways remain unclear. This PhD will use GenV’s whole-state cohort (>120,000) to study how maternal conditions – pregnancy-specific (eg pre-eclampsia, gestational diabetes) and general (eg depression, asthma) – affect health and development to age 3y. Using administrative, clinical and survey data, the student will advance extraction of clinical data and case definitions of maternal and child conditions in the GenV resource. Causal inference and family-based methods will examine outcomes to age 3y such as growth, infection, allergy, sleep, behaviour and development, the project will address confounding and explore diverse inputs including multimorbidity and social factors. This PhD suits exceptional students interested in causal epidemiology, maternal-child health, data science and early prevention. May work closely with a health economics student. Top-up Director’s Scholarship may be available. Supervisors: Prof Melissa Wake Child services and economic impacts of health conditions in pregnancy: The GenV population cohort Child services and economic impacts of health conditions in pregnancy: The GenV population cohortProject description: Maternal conditions in pregnancy may drive early health system use and costs for children, but the burden, patterns and potential solutions are not well understood. Using GenV’s linked health and administrative data, this PhD will quantify how maternal conditions – both pregnancy-specific (eg preeclampsia, gestational diabetes) and general (eg depression, asthma) – impact children’s health service use across all major sectors (well-child, general practice, secondary and tertiary care), medication and well-being to age 3y. It will explore variation by condition, multimorbidity, and social and geographic factors, providing evidence for service planning and prevention. This PhD will suit exceptional students with interests in health economics, population health, maternal-child health and policy impact. May work closely with a causal epidemiology student. Top-up Director’s Scholarship may be available. Supervisors: Prof Melissa Wake Life’s Essential 8: The GenHEART Platform Trial to reduce population cardiovascular disease (CVD) Life’s Essential 8: The GenHEART Platform Trial to reduce population cardiovascular disease (CVD)Project description: GenV will soon launch GenHEART, a multi-arm, multi-stage platform for CVD prevention trials in its state-wide birth and parent cohort (>120 000). This PhD places you at the centre of its creation. Your role Develop advanced skills in platform trial design, randomisation algorithms, decision rules. Community and stakeholder engagement to ensure equity, cultural safety and real-world fit. Design and pilot child and adult CV phenotypes for the GenV’s Early School Wave (ESW, 2028-30), forming GenHEART’s common baseline/outcome set. Contribute to planning and delivery of the ESW. Help drive one GenHEART trial, overseeing ethics, data capture and interim analysis. Expected outputs: an operational platform; pilot data to activate multiple arms; methodological and clinical papers. This PhD is for outstanding candidates (eg clinical, public health, implementation science) passionate about CV prevention, pragmatic trials and health equity. Top-up Director’s Scholarship may be available. Supervisors: Prof Melissa Wake, Prof Raghu Lingam GenLANG: Predicting and Measuring Language Outcomes at Scale GenLANG: Predicting and Measuring Language Outcomes at ScaleProject description: 1 in 7 preschoolers have oral language impairments, increasing lifelong risks across learning, wellbeing and justice – half of all youth offenders have a language disorder. Yet we still lack the scalable tools to identify at population level which children need therapy and who will recover without intervention. Generation Victoria (GenV), Australia’s largest-ever birth and parent cohort, offers an unprecedented opportunity to address this in its Victoria-wide Early School Wave (50,000+ children, 75,000 parents) in 2028–30. This PhD will help (1) design and pilot a cutting-edge, integrated suite of oral language phenotypic measures that are scalable through brevity, digital delivery and AI-based tools, (2) develop scoring mechanisms, and (3) explore preliminary predictive models of risk and resilience to enable earlier, better-targeted prevention. Ideal for students passionate about language, population health and digital predictive models. Top-up Director’s Scholarship may be available. Supervisors: Prof Angela Morgan, Dr Susan Clifford, Dr Loretta Gasparini, Industry partner – Redenlab supervisor Climate and Environment in GenV Climate and Environment in GenVProject description: Where we live matters for our health. Generation Victoria (GenV), Australia’s largest-ever birth and parent cohort (~125,000 participants), is ideally suited to answering questions and finding solutions related to environmental exposures and child and adult health, development and wellbeing. GenV offers opportunities for exceptional students to answer important health questions relating to a range of environmental exposures (eg climate, pollution, green space, neighbourhood design, walkability, housing, indoor environments). There are also opportunities to tackle problems related to measurement of environmental exposures using different technologies (eg GIS, remote sensing, GeoAI, geospatial data science, environmental monitoring, wearables). For example, using remote sensing and GIS to help build our geospatial platform of high-resolution indicators, or leading the design and piloting of environmental monitoring for GenV’s Early School Wave. Contact suzanne.mavoa@mcri.edu.au with your interest and ideas related to geospatial, climate, and environmental health. Will suit exceptional students with interests in climate, environment and social determinants of health and/or geospatial data science and GIS. Top-up Director’s Scholarship may be available. Supervisors: Assoc Prof Suzanne Mavoa Outcomes of environmental exposures in preconception, pregnancy and the early years Outcomes of environmental exposures in preconception, pregnancy and the early yearsProject description: The environments in which we live, work and play impact our health. It is also likely that the neighbourhood environments that parents are exposed to during preconception and pregnancy have lifelong health impacts. Studies have shown that exposure to air pollution in pregnancy is linked to a range of negative health effects at birth and in later life. However, we don’t yet know: 1) whether preconception exposures to neighbourhood environments are linked to health; 2) how parental exposures to other aspects of the neighbourhood environment such as greenspace, noise and access to services influence health; or 3) how different aspects of the neighbourhood interact, for example, does living in a greener neighbourhood offset the negative effects of air pollution? This PhD project will address these knowledge gaps by investigating the relationship between different aspects of the neighbourhood that parents were exposed to prior to birth and health outcomes in the early years of life. The project will use data from the Generation Victoria (GenV) cohort, which has collected parents’ residential address data and has information on child health. Multiple measures of the neighbourhood will be developed using geospatial data and methods (e.g., geographic information systems and remote sensing). These measures will be linked to GenV participant addresses, and statistical analyses will be used to investigate the relationship between parental exposures prior to birth and child health (e.g., preterm birth, child development). Findings from the PhD will inform environmental interventions via urban planning and design. This project will suit a researcher with strong quantitative skills, an interest in geography and neighbourhood environments, and a willingness to learn geospatial skills. Supervisors: A/Prof Suzanne Mavoa, Prof Melissa Wake GenNOISE: A whole-population study of noise and hearing in childhood and pre-midlife GenNOISE: A whole-population study of noise and hearing in childhood and pre-midlifeProject description: Hearing loss has lifelong impacts on learning, wellbeing, social participation and (in seniors) cognitive decline and mental illness. Environmental noise not only affects wellbeing but is a key driver of hearing loss and may amplify its effects. Yet we lack population-level data to identify when, where, and for whom noise and hearing loss prevention efforts should be targeted. Generation Victoria (GenV), Australia’s largest-ever birth and parent cohort, offers a one-off opportunity to study these issues in its statewide Early School Wave (50,000+ children, 75,000 parents) in 2028–30. This PhD will help (1) design and test a cutting-edge, integrated suite of scalable, noise and hearing measurements, and (2) examine how different noise sources (e.g. schools, leisure, transport) differentially affect hearing and wellbeing across priority population groups. Will suit exceptional clinical, epidemiology, biomed, biotech or public health students. Top-up Director’s Scholarship may be available. Supervisors: Dr Jing Wang, Assoc Prof Suzanne Mavoa Use and impact of psychotropic medication in pregnancy Use and impact of psychotropic medication in pregnancyProject description: Up to 20% of women suffer from mood or anxiety disorders during pregnancy, whose impacts on adverse pregnancy and child outcomes could be mitigated by antenatal psychotropic medications (such as antidepressants, antipsychotics, sedative-hypnotics and other sleep medications). While these medications appear safe in pregnancy, the knowledge base is incomplete, so some mothers choose against needed medication due to fear it may affect their unborn baby. This PhD student will work within the landmark ‘Generation Victoria’ (GenV) cohort, targeting all 150,000 babies born over two years (Oct 2021-Oct 2023) and their mothers at all 58 birthing hospitals in the state of Victoria, comprising consent, biosamples, and wide-ranging exposures and outcomes including administrative and clinical data. The student will contribute to creating a unique whole-state prescribing dataset within GenV by linkage/access to both primary care/outpatient medicines (Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS)) and birthing hospitals prescribing data during pregnancy and the perinatal period. They will map ante/perinatal psychotropic medication use in the GenV cohort and then use causal techniques (including consideration of regional variations in medication use) to assess impacts on perinatal and infant/toddler outcomes such as language development, fine motor skills, and body composition. Supervisors: Prof Melissa Wake, Dr Jessika Hu, Prof Peter Coghill