PhD in Modelling Offshore Windfarm Impacts on Marine Bird Populations

About the position
As offshore wind farms rapidly expand in the North Sea, understanding and mitigating their ecological impact on marine ecosystems is essential. The North Sea POWER project tackles this challenge by reducing key knowledge gaps on underwater noise, biomass and water flows, and wildlife disturbance (seabirds and bats), supporting a sustainable green energy transition. The project is funded through the Dutch Research Agenda (NWA) in collaboration with the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate.

Led by Wageningen University & Research, North Sea POWER is a transdisciplinary consortium of universities, societal stakeholders, conservation organizations, and energy sector partners. This PhD position is one of twelve PhD and postdoc roles in the consortium. You will be based at IBED (University of Amsterdam), studying offshore wind disturbances and marine bird population dynamics in close collaboration with Wageningen Marine Research (WMR), and working in a team with shared meetings and training.

The aim of the PhD project is to explore potential consequences of offshore wind farms (OWFs) on marine bird populations developing and analyzing models that are capable of accounting for the cumulating effects of OWFs, such as ecosystem changes, displacement of marine birds from their habitats and/or collisions of marine birds with turbines, over the full life history. The population models will be based on individual level energetics over the full annual cycle and life history (from egg to adult) for two seabird species (northern gannet and common guillemot). OWF impacts on energetic costs, feeding opportunities, mortality, and reproduction will be mechanistically integrated, while accounting for species and colony specific exposure.

What are you going to do?
Your PhD project will investigate how offshore wind farms affect marine bird populations, focusing on two sensitive seabird species: northern gannet and common guillemot.

Tasks and responsibilities:

• Develop mechanistic population models based on individual energetics and covering the full annual cycle and life history (egg to adult).
• Integrate sublethal effects (displacement, ecosystem change) and lethal effects (collisions) to assess individual and population-level outcomes.
• Account for species- and colony-specific exposure to offshore wind farms over space and time.
• Use physiologically structured population models (PSPMs) to link feeding, energetic costs, growth, mortality, and environmental conditions.

The work will contribute directly to improving Dutch assessments of offshore wind impacts on marine birds and will involve close collaboration with a project postdoc, stakeholders, and international research groups through co-creation and information exchange.

Your profile
Your experience and profile:

• MSc degree in ecology, preferably with specialization in theoretical ecology or theoretical biology, or with strong quantitative skills and experience in population or foodweb dynamic modelling,
• Affinity with marine biology and/or seabird ecology,
• Interest in developing scientific knowledge with societal relevance,
• Good computational skills,
• Willingness to work in a multidisciplinary environment and engage in stakeholder information exchange meetings,
• Experience with bifurcation analysis and bioenergetic models will be considered an advantage.

Our 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 preferred starting date is January 4, 2027. This 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. For this position the University Job Classification profile “Promovendus” (PhD candidate) applies. Your salary will be €3,204 gross per month in the first year and will increase to €4,051 in the final year, based on full-time employment of 38 hours per week. In addition, you will receive a 8% holiday allowance and 8.3% year-end allowance.

A favourable tax agreement, the ‘30% ruling’, may apply to non-Dutch applicants. The Collective Labour Agreement of Universities of the Netherlands is applicable.

Besides the salary and a vibrant and challenging environment at Science Park, we offer you multiple fringe benefits:

• 232 holiday hours per year (based on fulltime) and extra holidays between Christmas and 1 January;
• multiple courses to follow from our Teaching and Learning Centre;
• a complete educational program for PhD students;
• multiple courses on topics such as leadership for academic staff;
• multiple courses on topics such as time management, handling stress and an online learning platform with 100+ different courses;
• 7 weeks birth leave (partner leave) with 100% salary;
• partly paid parental leave;
• the possibility to set up a workplace at home;
• a pension at ABP for which UvA pays two third part of the contribution;
• the possibility to follow courses to learn Dutch;
• help with registration at UvA- Housing for a studio or small apartment when you’re moving from abroad.

Are you curious to read more about our extensive package of secondary employment benefits, take a look here.

About us
The Institute for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Dynamics (IBED) is one of eight research institutes of the Faculty of Science at the University of Amsterdam. The research at IBED aims to unravel how ecosystems function in all their complexity, and how they change due to natural processes and human activities. At its core lies an integrated systems approach to study biodiversity, ecosystems and the environment. IBED adopts this systems approach to ecosystems, addressing abiotic (soil and water quality) and biotic factors (ecology and evolution of plants, animals, and microorganisms), and the interplay between those. The IBED vision includes research encompassing experimental and theoretical approaches at a wide variety of temporal and spatial scales, i.e. from molecules and microorganisms to patterns and processes occurring at the global scale. The University of Amsterdam has excellent high performance computing facilities. Furthermore, IBED has a dedicated computational support team with specialized knowledge of bioinformatics, (geo)database management and scientific programming. IBED also works with non-academic partners to deliver transdisciplinary science for society.

The position will be based in the Department of Theoretical and Computational Ecology. Research in the Department of Theoretical and Computational Ecology focuses on understanding the complexity of ecological systems by using theoretical and advanced computational approaches. We generate insights into the dynamics of individual organisms, populations, species, communities, the abiotic environment, and interactions among these system components on ecological and evolutionary timescales of populations and communities. We expect the successful candidate to share working time between the Department of Theoretical and Computational Ecology (Amsterdam) and Wageningen Marine Research (IJmuiden).

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

Research Assistant

I-Heal examines how AI chatbots become embedded within everyday care and support networks, particularly where access to formal or informal support is unavailable, delayed, or avoided. The project combines semi-structured interviews with creative mapping workshops to understand how AI interacts with relationships with family, friends, community organisations and healthcare services.

Working closely with the Principal Investigator, you will:

• Recruit men who use AI chatbots for mental health support through social media, community organisations, mental health services and local networks.
• Conduct semi-structured interviews, exploring participants’ experiences of mental health support, their use of AI chatbots, and their engagement with other sources of care.
• Contribute to the preparation and delivery of two creative mapping workshops in Rotterdam.
• Transcribe and analyse qualitative interview and workshop data.
• Contribute to research outputs, including a policy-oriented report and academic publication.
• Work collaboratively with the Principal Investigator and project partners.

The research involves sensitive conversations about mental health and distress. You will receive training and close supervision in conducting research using a trauma-informed approach. Clear safeguarding procedures will be in place, and you will not be expected to provide mental health support to participants.

This is an opportunity to develop substantial experience in qualitative and participatory research while contributing to an emerging research agenda at the intersection of AI, mental health, gender, care and urban inequality. The role is idea for someone who has recently completed a master’s or research master’s and is looking for academic research experience.

Assistant Professor of Natural Language Processing

Join Us!
The NLP-group of the Institute for Logic, Language and Computation (ILLC) at the University of Amsterdam is looking for an Assistant Professor to work on large reasoning models, AI alignment and AI for science and research.

This is what you will do
The Institute for Logic, Language and Computation (ILLC) of the University of Amsterdam is looking for a new Assistant Professor in Natural Language Processing, to complement its existing expertise. The ILLC does world-class, curiosity-driven research and serves as a rallying point for information scientists across traditional research fields, ranging from AI, computer science and mathematics to linguistics, cognitive science and philosophy. ILLC’s scientific mission is to study the formal properties of information, viz. the fundamental structure and properties of processes of encoding, transmitting and comprehending information. The institute has been home to leading research groups in Computational Linguistics/Natural Language Processing since its founding in 1991, and has in that time made pioneering contributions to statistical NLP, deep learning for NLP, and evaluation and interpretability of language models.

We seek candidates conducting research on natural language processing. The areas of particular interest include large language model (LLM) development (pre-training and post-training), large reasoning models, AI alignment and AI for science and research. An ideal candidate would be able to collaborate with other groups at the ILLC, conducting research on reasoning, planning, verification algorithms and AI for mathematics.

What we ask of you

• A PhD in a relevant field such as NLP, AI, computer science or mathematics;
• Excellent research skills, evidenced by a track record of publications in renowned international journals or conference venues in any of the above mentioned fields, and contributed and/or invited talks at international conferences/workshops;
• Able to develop an independent line of research in her/his area of expertise;
• Has a strong affinity with the ILLC’s multidisciplinary environment and likes to participate in interdisciplinary collaboration;
• Proven skills in academic education in any of the above fields;
• Possesses the Dutch Basic Teaching Qualification (UTQ/BKO), or is willing to acquire this within the first two years;
• Ideally, has some experience with (co-)supervision of BSc, MSc and/or PhD students;
• Excellent oral and written communication skills.

This is what we offer you
We offer a temporary employment contract for 38 hours per week for a period of 18 months. The preferred starting date is as soon as possible. A permanent contract follows in case of a positive performance assessment.

The gross monthly salary, based on 38 hours per week and dependent on relevant experience, ranges between € 4,925 to € 6,682 (scale 11). This does not include 8% holiday allowance and 8,3% year-end allowance. The UFO profile Assistant Professor 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.

Curious about our extensive secondary benefits package? You can read more about it here.

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 for Logic, Language and Computation is home to a thriving community of scholars, including philosophers, logicians, mathematicians, computer scientists, linguists, musicologists, and cognitive scientists, who share a fascination with the interdisciplinary study of information. At the ILLC we combine the problem solving skills from the sciences with the holistic and reflective view of the humanities to discover the principles that regulate information processing and find answers to some of the hardest challenges of our time.

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

Assistant Professor Machine Learning for Formal Reasoning and Verification

Join Us!
The TCS-group of the Institute for Logic, Language and Computation (ILLC) at the University of Amsterdam is looking for an Assistant Professor to work on machine learning for formal reasoning and verification.

This is what you will do
The position of Assistant Professor (Universitair Docent, UD) will be embedded within the Institute for Logic, Language and Computation (ILLC). The ILLC promotes curiosity-driven research and serves as a meeting point for computer scientists from traditional research fields ranging from AI, computer science, and mathematics to linguistics, cognitive science, and philosophy.

The ILLC’s scientific mission is to study the formal properties of information—namely, the fundamental structure and characteristics of processes involved in encoding, transmitting, and understanding information. The latter concept should be understood in the broadest sense: it encompasses not only the mathematical and algorithmic properties of formal languages, but also information flow in Natural Language Processing (NLP) and in human cognitive activities such as reasoning.

We are seeking candidates working at the intersection of artificial intelligence, machine learning, and formal reasoning. Relevant areas include, but are not limited to, automated reasoning, interactive theorem proving systems, formal verification, formalized mathematics, neuro-symbolic methods, and AI-assisted mathematical or logical reasoning.

We particularly welcome candidates whose work connects modern AI and machine learning with formal proof systems, interactive theorem provers, or proof assistants such as Lean, Rocq, or Isabelle. At the same time, we also encourage applications from researchers whose work engages more broadly with logic, reasoning, and theoretical computer science.

Requirements

• A PhD in a relevant field, such as AI, logic, computer science, or mathematics;
• Excellent research skills, demonstrated by a track record of publications in reputable international journals or conference venues in one of the above-mentioned fields, as well as contributions to and/or invited talks at international conferences and workshops;
• Ability to develop an independent line of research within their area of expertise;
• A strong affinity with the ILLC’s multidisciplinary environment and enthusiasm for participating in interdisciplinary research;
• Demonstrable academic teaching skills in one of the above-mentioned fields;
• Possession of the University Teaching Qualification (UTQ/BKO), or willingness to obtain it within the first two years;
• Ideally, some experience in (co-)supervising BSc, MSc, and/or PhD students;
• Excellent oral and written communication skills;
• Ideally, a track record of contributing to research valorisation and outreach activities in research and education.

This is what we offer you
We offer a temporary employment contract for 38 hours per week for a period of 18 months. The preferred starting date is as soon as possible. A permanent contract follows in case of a positive performance assessment.

The gross monthly salary, based on 38 hours per week and dependent on relevant experience, ranges between € 4,925 to € 6,682 (scale 11). This does not include 8% holiday allowance and 8,3% year-end allowance. The UFO profile Assistant Professor 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.

Curious about our extensive secondary benefits package? You can read more about it here.

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 for Logic, Language and Computation is home to a thriving community of scholars, including philosophers, logicians, mathematicians, computer scientists, linguists, musicologists, and cognitive scientists, who share a fascination with the interdisciplinary study of information. At the ILLC we combine the problem solving skills from the sciences with the holistic and reflective view of the humanities to discover the principles that regulate information processing and find answers to some of the hardest challenges of our time.

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

Postdoc Dynamiek van armoede en inkomen

Als postdoc werk je aan twee onderzoeksprojecten over sociale en economische mobiliteit. In beide projecten staat niet alleen de sociaaleconomische positie van mensen centraal, maar vooral de dynamiek daarin: hoe veranderen inkomens- en arbeidsmarktposities over de tijd, welke factoren dragen daaraan bij, en wat betekenen deze veranderingen voor mensen en voor de omgeving waarin zij wonen?

Het eerste project, Dynamiek van werkende armoede, wordt uitgevoerd met steun van Instituut Gak en is reeds gestart. Het onderzoekt hoe werkenden in een situatie van armoede terechtkomen en hoe zij daar uitkomen. Daarbij kijken we naar veranderingen in werk, inkomen en huishoudsituatie en naar de rol van instituties en ondersteuning. Je bouwt voort op het werk van de huidige postdoc en draagt bij aan de verdere uitvoering, analyse en wetenschappelijke publicaties van het project.

Het tweede project, Dynamiek van sociale stijgers, is een nieuw onderzoeksproject gericht op Rotterdam-Zuid. Hier onderzoeken we wat er gebeurt wanneer inwoners een substantiële inkomensstijging doormaken. Blijven zij in hun wijk wonen of verhuizen zij? Welke overwegingen spelen daarbij een rol? En wat betekenen deze individuele keuzes voor buurten en voor de sociaaleconomische ontwikkeling van Rotterdam-Zuid?

Beide projecten combineren kwantitatieve en kwalitatieve onderzoeksmethoden. Een deel van de kwantitatieve analyses wordt uitgevoerd in samenwerking met andere onderzoekers. Van jou verwachten we dat je zelfstandig kwalitatief onderzoek kunt ontwerpen en uitvoeren, kunt bijdragen aan kwantitatieve analyses en verbindingen kunt leggen tussen verschillende soorten data en analyses. Ervaring met CBS microdata analyse is een pre.

Je werkt samen met onderzoekers van de Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam en met maatschappelijke en beleidsmatige partners. Je draagt bij aan dataverzameling en analyse van deze data. Je draagt bij aan wetenschappelijke publicaties en de vertaling van onderzoeksbevindingen naar een breder publiek. Er is daarbij ruimte om vanuit je eigen expertise bij te dragen aan de verdere inhoudelijke ontwikkeling van beide projecten.