PhD Position in Regulatory Innovation

Although animal testing currently remains a key step in the development of medicines, it often provides limited insights into how drugs will work in humans, while also being time-consuming and costly. A successful transition to the use of NAMs requires not only technical changes, but also cultural, policy and organisational changes. This necessitates the involvement of a wide range of stakeholders, such as researchers, risk assessors, companies and policymakers.

You will conduct PhD research into the integration of NAMs into the regulatory ecosystem, with the aim of improving the translational potential of medicines and reducing the use of laboratory animals. In doing so, you will draw on the unique knowledge base within Ombion (Centre for Animal-Free Biomedical Translation), an ambitious national programme aimed at accelerating the transition to animal-free biomedical innovations. Transition projects within Ombion focus on animal-free innovations for new therapies for asthma/COPD, osteoarthritis/arthritis, ALS and cystic fibrosis.

Potential research topics include:

• the needs of target users of NAMs such as researchers (NAM developers and pharmaceutical industry) and risk assessors in determining the desired level of evidence generated by NAMs;
• the experiences of NAM developers and end-users with qualification procedures and the role of supporting tools, such as a Regulatory Dashboard;
• confidence in NAM data among different target groups and in different contexts (predicting the desired effect in humans vs. ruling out safety risks);
• transferability of approaches and models from research into the application of NAMs in the safety assessment of chemical substances to medicinal products and vice versa.

Postdoctoral Researcher in Regulatory Innovation

You will contribute to strengthening the position of New Approach Methodologies (NAMs) within the national and international regulatory ecosystem. Your focus will be on unlocking and applying regulatory knowledge to accelerate the transition. You will work multidisciplinary within a large network of partners from academia, government and the private sector, acting as a link between knowledge, policy, practice and business. Your activities will include:

• Building expertise: you will map out the regulatory ecosystem surrounding NAMs used for biomedical translation and the safety assessment of medicinal products. You will develop, integrate and share your knowledge of (primarily European) regulatory frameworks and the validation and qualification of these models.
• Sharing and disseminating knowledge: you will develop and manage an interactive Regulatory Dashboard that makes knowledge about NAMs, validation and qualification procedures accessible to developers and end-users. In addition, you will design processes to streamline regulatory queries and advice.
• Stakeholder engagement: you will build sustainable relationships with policymakers, regulatory bodies, companies and researchers. You will facilitate knowledge exchange and networking events on the regulatory aspects of animal-free innovation.
• Regulatory Science: you will translate relevant topics from the Ombion programme into scientific research questions for the evaluation of regulatory systems and processes. Additionally, within the programme, you will be part of the supervision team for a PhD candidate conducting research in the field of regulatory science and innovation.
• Alignment and coordination: you will oversee regulatory activities within Ombion and work closely with the regulatory affairs officers of the transition projects and the regulatory managers at the National Institute for Public Health and the Environment (RIVM).

PhD Mediated Sciences: how social media impacts climate communication practice.

Do you want to do field research on how social media platforms influence climate science communication in practice? In this PhD project, you will study the experiences, routine practices, and ideas of science communicators who use social media platforms such as X and LinkedIn to communicate academic knowledge about climate and sustainability. The project will investigate this by looking at concrete case studies within the Dutch context (within sites of commercial, academic, journalistic science communication/public engagement). The purpose is to understand how platform features like engagement analytics (e.g. views, likes) or perceptions of the affordances of interfaces become embedded within these communicators’ norms of content creation. How do practitioners seek to uphold science’s public credibility in their work as they participate in attention economies that have been shown to incentivize disinformation? These questions are all the more urgent and societally relevant today, because the rise of social media platforms has multiplied science communication actors and is challenging the dominance of traditional science communicators. This PhD research project will be situated within the team-project (Vidi), Mediated Science: Expanding How We Study Social Media’s Influence on Climate Disinformation led by Donya Alinejad at Utrecht University’s Department of Media and Culture Studies.

Your main responsibilities will include:

• Conducting research of excellent empirical and analytical quality in close collaboration with the PI and the Postdoc;
• Publishing in leading international peer-reviewed journals and contributing to edited volumes or other publications where relevant;
• Presenting research findings at international conferences, workshops, and academic networks;
• Supporting as well as independently organizing local and international academic events;
• Meaningfully engaging with societal stakeholders where relevant;
• Contributing to the project’s public communication strategy and knowledge dissemination activities;
• Managing your own project under the guidance of the supervision team;
• Participating actively in the intellectual life of the research group, including seminars, reading groups, and collaborative writing processes.

Postdoc in Computational Neuroscience of Adversity and Mental Health

The Department of Clinical Psychology at Utrecht University has a job opening for a Postdoctoral Researcher. You will analyse and publish findings from a large multimodal dataset including fMRI, salivary cortisol, behavioural tasks, and questionnaire data from young adults (age 18–24 years) with a history of childhood adversity (Buimer et al., 2025, preprint https://europepmc.org/article/ppr/ppr1071622). The project examines how adversity affects social learning and self-esteem, and how these processes contribute to mental health outcomes. You will apply advanced statistical and computational modelling approaches (e.g. reinforcement learning models, hierarchical modelling) and contribute to high-impact publications. You can present your work at national and international conferences and collaborate with researchers in experimental psychopathology, computational psychiatry, and clinical science. You will spend approximately 20% of your time on teaching, either through lecturing or supervising student research projects. Students may support your research by collecting pilot data for grant applications or preprocessing datasets. You will also be supported in developing your own research line and writing grant applications.

This position is initially offered for one year. Within this period, you will:

1. Analyse an fMRI dataset using a social evaluation paradigm developed by Dr Will (Will et al., 2017; eLife). You will apply computational models to investigate how experimentally manipulated self-esteem influences social learning in individuals with a history of childhood adversity. This work is intended to result in a first-author paper;
2. Analyse a second dataset collected by members of our department (e.g., Dr Gerritsen & Dr Krypotos) aligned with your expertise and interests, for example on computational modelling of avoidance (see Krypotos et al., 2022, Pain), ecological momentary assessment data on avoidance and pain, and intensive longitudinal data on sex hormones and mental health (see Doornweerd & Gerritsen 2025, Psychological Medicine). This work is intended to result in a second first-author paper.;
3. Prepare grant applications in collaboration with researchers in our department working on depression, trauma, anxiety, CBT, and hormonal influences on mental health, with the aim of securing follow-up funding and extending the position.

Postdoctoral Researcher “Eating Disorders"

As postdoctoral researcher you will contribute to research on eating disorders and teach in our Bachelor and/or Master Psychology program. In this role you will be working with dr. Lot Sternheim and be part of the Clinical Psychology: cognitive and emotional processes research group (Chair: Prof. Elske Salemink). You will also have the opportunity to work together with eating disorder researchers from both the Utrecht University and clinical eating disorder institutions.Fifty percent of the research time will be allocated to research projects on eating disorders in Southern African countries and their correlates (i.e. body image, trauma, globalization and food insecurity). The other fifty percent of research time can be used by the Postdoctoral Researcher to set up or establish their own research line, as long as this research is eating disorder related and in agreement with dr. Lot Sternheim. The core tasks of the Postdoctoral Researcher include (jointly) designing and conducting studies, analysing data, preparing manuscripts, and presenting findings at international conferences. Twenty percent of the position involves teaching responsibilities, to be agreed upon jointly with the department and the postdoc; these may include supervising BA and MA thesis students, supervising MA internship students, and teaching working groups.

This role provides a unique balance of mentorship, collaboration, and research autonomy, ideal for early-career scientists eager to advance their academic eating disorder profile in a supportive, innovative environment.