Postdoc on Stable Optical Circuits for Quantum Technology

Join us!
We are developing technology to robotically manufacture robust optical circuits for quantum technology and beyond. We provided the circuit boards for the AQuRA optical lattice clock and are offering such boards through our spin-off OpticsFoundry. Join us to push this technology to the next level in a collaboration with the Nonlinear Nanophotonics group of UTwente. You will expand our robotic manufacturing capabilities, allowing us to manufacture more versatile optical systems, including lasers, cavities, frequency references and more. If successful, you will be able to join OpticsFoundry and bring your achievements to the market.

What you will do
You will join a fast paced, tightly aligned team building, testing, and iterating cutting edge technology in a startup style environment. You will be expected to operate as an end-to-end problem solver, taking ownership of problems and driving them forward independently, while staying closely connected with the team. You will draw on both your own expertise and that of the team to rapidly identify problems, propose solutions, and prototype, test, and validate new ideas that expand our core technical capabilities. Your work will include designing and building robust optical circuits incorporating new types of elements. These include gain media, active positioning elements such as piezos and stepper motors, cavities, spectroscopy cells, photonic integrated circuits, and more. You will also develop robotic manufacturing techniques to place, align, and integrate these new components into scalable production workflows. You will build and benchmark real, usable optical systems such as laser lock circuits and laser sources, iterating quickly based on experimental results and feedback. In parallel, you will contribute to prototyping, validating, and debugging production processes, and work with users to ensure our solutions are practical, reliable, and genuinely delightful to use. If things go well, you will have the opportunity to join OpticsFoundry, ship advanced optical circuits to customers, and grow with the company as part of the core technical team.

What we ask of you
We are looking for someone who is excited about growing a small startup into a successful company and who loves to creatively solve technical puzzles. You also should have:

• a recent PhD in experimental atomic, molecular and optical physics;
• good skills with optics, and some experience with electronics and control software;
• great team working and learning skills, enabling rapid adaptation to evolving project needs;
• initiative and good time management skills;
• good communication skills in oral and written English.

What we offer you
We offer a temporary employment contract for 38 hours per week for a period of 12 months. The preferred starting date is as soon as possible. The gross monthly salary, based on 38 hours per week and dependent on relevant experience, ranges between € 3,546 to € 5,538 (scale 10). This does not include 8% holiday allowance and 8,3% year-end allowance. The UFO profile Researcher is applicable. A favourable tax agreement, the ‘30% ruling’, may apply to non-Dutch applicants. The Collective Labour Agreement of Universities of the Netherlands is applicable.

You will work in this team
The Faculty of Science has a student body of around 8,000, as well as 1,800 members of staff working in education, research or support services. Researchers and students at the Faculty of Science are fascinated by every aspect of how the world works, be it elementary particles, the birth of the universe or the functioning of the brain.

The Institute of Physics (IoP) of the Faculty of Science combines the Van der Waals-Zeeman Institute (WZI), the Institute of Theoretical Physics (ITFA) and the Institute for High Energy Physics (IHEF) and is one of the large research institutes of the Faculty of Science at the University of Amsterdam. The Van der Waals - Zeeman Institute for Experimental Physics (IoP-WZI) is part of the IoP and home to three research clusters: Quantum Gases & Quantum Information (QG&QI), Quantum Materials (QMat), and Soft Matter (SM).

You will work in the Strontium Quantum Gases Group, part of the QG&QI cluster and headed by Prof. Dr. Florian Schreck. We exploit ultracold Sr gases for quantum sensing, the study of many-body physics and for quantum computing. We explore new ways to build sensors, such as superradiant clocks and collaborate with industry, startups and users to bring quantum technology to the market.

Want to know more about our organisation? Read more about working at the University of Amsterdam.

PhD position on Quantum Simulation with RbSr Ground-state Molecules

Join us!
When atoms are cooled to nanokelvin temperatures, their quantum-mechanical wave properties become evident. At densities where their de-Broglie wavelengths overlap, a quantum-degenerate gas is formed, either a Bose-Einstein condensate (for bosons) or a degenerate Fermi gas (for fermions). At the University of Amsterdam we are exploring a unique mixture of atomic species, namely Rb and Sr. The long-standing goal is to bring these species together and form RbSr molecules. A key milestone in this regard was the discovery and characterization of so-called Feshbach resonances in this mixture [Nat.Phys 14, 881 (2018)]. Since then, we have developed several key insights and new tools, see Rev.Sci.Instr. 94, 073202 (2023) and the recent PhD thesis of Premjith Thekkeppatt.

What you will do
Your goals will be to explore the opportunities that we have identified in the RbSr mixture. We will employ the recently demonstrated stabilization of the 87Rb-87Sr (Bose-Fermi) resonantly interacting mixture under confinement in an optical lattice. We will study the effects of further reduction in dimensionality by additional optical trapping in the form of optical lattices and/or optical tweezers. We have developed a high-resolution multi-wavelength objective that will be used to achieve better sensitivity for both species. We aim to create weakly bound RbSr molecules through the use of confinement-induced resonance. From there, we will be able to create ground-state molecules by optical adiabatic state-transfer techniques. Another avenue we will explore is the physics of strongly interacting Bose-Fermi mixtures in our system.
This project is embedded in the ultracold atom part of the QDNL programme, and will allow you to learn about many interesting projects related to your PhD, in particular those of the strontium BEC group and of the hybrid atom-ion group. Your PhD project will profit from synergy with all these activities.

What we ask of you
We are looking for someone who is excited about pushing novel types of ultracold atom experiments to new reals of AMO physics. You also should have

• a recent master in experimental ultracold atom or trapped ion physics.
• great team working skills.
• initiative and good time management skills.
• good communication skills in oral and written English.
• some experience with data analysis;
• strong letter of recommendation from master project supervisor;
• Beneficial skill: programming, including some languages of the following list: C, C++, Python, Matlab, Mathematica. Programming skills will be used to build experiment control systems, data analysis systems, and to perform numerical simulations of experiments.

What we offer you
We offer a temporary contract for 38 hours per week for the duration of 4 years (the initial contract will be for a period of 18 months and after satisfactory evaluation it will be extended for a total duration of 4 years). The gross monthly salary, based on 38 hours per week ranges between € 3,059 to € 3,881 (Scale P). This does not include 8% holiday allowance and 8,3% year-end allowance. The UFO profile PhD candidate is applicable. A favourable tax agreement, the ‘30% ruling’, may apply to non-Dutch applicants.

The preferred starting date is to be discussed and lies preferably between April to September 2026. This employment should lead to a dissertation (PhD thesis). We will draft an educational plan that includes attendance of courses and (international) meetings. We also expect you to assist in teaching undergraduates and master students.

You will work in this team
The Faculty of Science has a student body of around 8,000, as well as 1,800 members of staff working in education, research or support services. Researchers and students at the Faculty of Science are fascinated by every aspect of how the world works, be it elementary particles, the birth of the universe or the functioning of the brain.

The Institute of Physics (IoP) of the Faculty of Science combines the Van der Waals-Zeeman Institute (WZI), the Institute of Theoretical Physics (ITFA) and the Institute for High Energy Physics (IHEF) and is one of the large research institutes of the Faculty of Science at the University of Amsterdam. The Van der Waals - Zeeman Institute for Experimental Physics (IoP-WZI) is part of the IoP and home to three research clusters: Quantum Gases & Quantum Information (QG&QI), Quantum Materials (QMat), and Soft Matter (SM).

You will join the Strontium Quantum Gases Group of the QG&QI cluster. We are using ultracold atoms and trapped ions as a means to investigate and utilize fascinating phenomena in quantum physics. We are particularly interested in developing novel platforms for quantum information science, quantum many-body physics, quantum sensing, and optical atomic clocks.

Want to know more about our organisation? Read more about working at the University of Amsterdam.

Tenured Assistant Professor in Software Security

The Computer Science department of the University of Twente is expanding and seeks a new colleague to strengthen its cybersecurity research.

The position:
Our society increasingly depends on the digital world, making cybersecurity critical for ensuring the safety and resilience of IT systems and services.

In this area, the Semantics, Cybersecurity and Services (SCS) group of the University of Twente is looking for an Assistant Professor to join the cybersecurity team. The SCS group conducts internationally recognized research in three main areas: Systems Security, Data Security, and AI Security (including both the security of AI systems and AI-driven security techniques).

We are looking for a dynamic and ambitious researcher to develop an independent research line in Software Security, with topics including (but not limited to) fuzzing, symbolic execution, binary analysis, and reverse engineering. The successful candidate is passionate about cutting-edge cybersecurity research, has a strong publication record —including publications at leading security venues such as USENIX Security, NDSS, IEEE S&P, and ACM CCS— and is eager to contribute to a vibrant academic environment that values collaboration, creativity, and excellence.

Your responsibilities:

• Conduct high-impact research and lead innovative research initiatives;
• Secure external research funding and contribute to grant proposals;
• Supervise PhD candidates and postdoctoral researchers;
• Contribute to the development and coordination of our educational programs by teaching 2–3 courses aligned with your expertise;
• Supervise Bachelor’s and Master’s thesis projects.

PhD position in Optimisation and Optimal Transport

We are looking for a talented, research-oriented PhD candidate to join the NWO-VIDI project “SPARGO: Exploring and Exploiting the Geometric Landscape of Infinite-Dimensional Sparse Optimisation” led by Dr. Marcello Carioni at the University of Twente. More information about this here.

Infinite-dimensional modelling has always held a central role in applied mathematics and, nowadays, its popularity has surged in fields traditionally focused on real-world applications, such as engineering, machine learning and imaging. This evolution calls for new methodologies capable of effectively representing and compressing data in infinite-dimensional settings.

In this project, we aim to address this challenge by developing a theoretical framework for the optimal representation of infinite-dimensional data and by designing compression algorithms specifically tailored to such representations. Within this perspective, Optimal Transport will play a fundamental role, as it provides a principled way to compare data distributions capturing their underlying geometric structure. A solid understanding of this theoretical framework will be essential for addressing real-world problems. In particular, we will consider applications to neural network training, imaging, and the analysis and numerical solution of partial differential equations.