The Department of Radiology is pleased to be able to offer several collaborative projects under the MRC-iCase scheme. The start date for these projects is 1st October 2026.
Students studying under the MRC iCASE programme will spend at least 3 months working with an industrial partner, experiencing two distinct research cultures and enabling better understanding and experience of future career opportunities within industry as well as in the University context.
Our iCase projects fall under three research themes – please click through each link for a full description.
1 - Radiomics Pipeline for Staging Chronic Liver Disease
Principal Supervisor: Professor Martin Graves, mjg40@cam.ac.uk
In partnership with GE HealthCare, this project proposes the development of a radiomics-based pipeline to stage liver fibrosis using MRI. Radiomics, a developing field in medical imaging, enables the extraction of high-dimensional quantitative features—such as texture, shape, and intensity—from standard imaging data. These features can reveal patterns not discernible to the human eye and support disease classification, prognosis, and treatment planning.
2- Preclinical Development of Novel Radiopharmaceuticals
Principal Supervisor: Professor Luigi Aloj, imaging@cancer.cam.ac.uk
In partnership with Philochem, this project focuses on the preclinical development of novel radiopharmaceuticals targeting key cancer-associated markers including CA125/MUC16, carbonic anhydrase IX (CAIX) and fibronectin splice isoforms. The goal is to create agents suitable for positron emission tomography (PET) as well as for radioligand therapy using beta and alpha emitting isotopes. The project will span the preclinical pipeline with prospects for clinical translation.
3 - Molecular imaging of tumour metabolism across tissue scales –
Principal Supervisor: Professor Ferdia Gallagher, fag1000@cam.ac.uk
In partnership with AstraZeneca, this project works with a new in vivo metabolic imaging technology termed parahydrogen-induced polarisation, which allows rapid and repeated intravenous injection of a wide range of imaging probes to study cellular metabolism. These metabolic pathways can be targets for pharmacological intervention and serve as functional measures of drug-target interaction. The project will focus on lung and pancreatic cancer models, and the in vivo imaging will be compared with advanced tissue analysis methods such as mass spectrometry imaging, multiplexed immunohistochemistry, immune phenotyping, and spatial transcriptomics. The overall goal will be to deconvolve the cellular and immune contribution to the overall metabolic signal on imaging at a whole organism level.
Candidate:
We are looking for highly motivated and enthusiastic individuals capable of thinking and working independently. Applicants should have or shortly expect to obtain a first or high 2:1 bachelor’s degree from a UK university, or an equivalent standard from an overseas university, in a relevant subject such as imaging, physics, biology, biochemistry, chemistry, computational science, data analysis, artificial intelligence, machine learning, or medicine.
How To Apply
To apply for any of these projects and the associated funding, please contact the relevant PI at their above email addresses with a CV to express your interest.
You may apply for more than one research theme.
You must then also submit a formal application via the University application portal before the funding deadline of 7th January 2025. The link and instructions on how to apply can be found on the following page: Applying for postgraduate courses at Cambridge | Postgraduate Study
Please note that the funding for the iCase studentships is not guaranteed for any given project, even if candidates are put forward by the Department for the second interview round. Therefore, we would recommend that applicants opt in to be considered for other University funding when making their application.