At the Centre for Fertility and Health, we have available a 3-year position as a PhD student working on the INFERTILITY project funded by the European Research Council: Understanding the causal nature of the relationship between infertility and cardiovascular disease. As a PhD student in the Centre you will be part of a multidisciplinary research team consisting of epidemiologists, geneticists, demographers, and other social scientists from Norway and abroad. 

The INFERTILITY project sets out to understand the complex relationship between infertility and cardiovascular diseases. We will first evaluate whether both men and women who are infertile have an increased risk of cardiovascular disease. To evaluate the direction of the relationship, we will also examine whether classic risk factors for cardiovascular disease (overweight, smoking, high blood pressure, etc.) influences the risk of infertility. This will highlight whether infertility might simply be a marker of a poorer underlying cardiometabolic health present before being diagnosed with fertility problems. We will also evaluate whether pregnancy complications and the use of assisted reproductive technologies might explain any increased risk of cardiovascular disease among infertile women. The project will use readily collected data from large population-based cohorts and the national health registries, including the Norwegian Mother, Father and Child Cohort Study (MoBa) and the Trøndelag Health Study (HUNT). The project will use genotype data both to conduct genetic association studies and to use genetic variants as instrumental variables in Mendelian randomization analyses.   

As a PhD student you will be enrolled at the PhD program at the University of Oslo. Some traveling should be expected, and there are possibilities for research visits abroad during the PhD period.