Functional application manager Finance

Operations at WUR are undergoing significant change! We are in the midst of a period of major transformation across business processes, administrative systems and digital platforms. As a functional application manager, your challenge will be to work with the team to ensure the continuity of the current financial platforms and to ensure a smooth transition to a new platform.

In this team, you will use your knowledge of, for example, procurement processes, accounting processes, project administration and customer relationship management processes to support users and ensure the software is optimally configured. Your knowledge of IT infrastructure, data models and data management will enable you to make the right choices and refine processes for smooth operational application management. We need your proactive, collaborative and sociable nature to organise all the operational work and the changes effectively. We need you now – a go-getter who takes the initiative, gets things done and inspires others with your ability to bring about change!

Your main tasks and responsibilities as a functional application manager:

• you are fluent in the Dutch language
• functional application management and user support for financial platforms (you’ll focus primarily on Unit4 Business World);
• acting as a liaison between the user organisation, suppliers and the IT organisation;
• refining processes for platform management and user support;
• monitoring security aspects and requirements;
• ensuring that the platform infrastructure aligns with the requirements and processes of the user organisation.

This is where you’ll be working
At WUR, you’ll be working within Digitalisation & Information Services (DIS). This department brings together all the teams collaborating on WUR’s digital agenda. Within DIS, there are plenty of opportunities to specialise further and develop your skills in your field.

Your team is part of the IT Operations department. The management and support of the financial applications are handled by the Finance, Procurement and Projects (FP&I) team. Here, you will work alongside five functional application managers, a product owner, a scrum master and a business analyst. Together, you will be responsible for the security, continuity and quality of the data in the software used for project administration, expense claims, financial administration and procurement.

Functioneel applicatiebeheerder Finance

Bedrijfsvoering binnen de WUR is volop in beweging! We zitten midden in een periode waar zowel in bedrijfsprocessen, administraties en de digitale platformen veel verandert. Als functioneel applicatiebeheerder is het jouw uitdaging om samen met het team de continuïteit op de huidige financiële platformen te borgen en de transitie naar een nieuw platform goed te laten landen.

In dit team zul je je kennis over bijvoorbeeld inkoopprocessen, boekhoudprocessen, projectadministratie en relatiebeheerprocessen gebruiken voor ondersteuning van gebruikers en een optimale inrichting van de software. Je kennis van IT-infrastructuur, datamodellen en gegevensbeheer stellen je in staat de juiste keuzes en processen te verfijnen voor een soepel operationeel applicatiebeheer. We hebben jouw initiatiefrijke en verbindende, sociale karakter nodig om al het operationele werk én de veranderingen goed te kunnen organiseren. Jóu hebben we nu nodig, de aanpakker die makkelijk zelf in beweging komt, ergens op afstapt en aanstekelijk in je verandervermogen!

Jouw voornaamste taken en verantwoordelijkheden als functioneel applicatiebeheerder:

• je beheerst het Nederlands vloeiend
• functioneel applicatiebeheer en gebruikersondersteuning van financiële platformen (je richt je vooral op Unit4 Business World);
• het vervullen van een brugfunctie tussen de gebruikersorganisatie, leveranciers en de IT-Organisatie;
• verfijnen van processen voor beheer en gebruikersondersteuning;
• bewaken security aspecten & eisen;
• borgen van aansluiting van platform inrichting op wensen en processen van de gebruikersorganisatie.

Hier ga je werken
Binnen de WUR ga je aan de slag bij Digitalization & Information Services (DIS). Binnen deze afdeling vind je alle teams die samenwerken aan de digitale agenda van de WUR. Er is binnen DIS volop mogelijkheid om je verder te specialiseren en te groeien in jouw vakgebied.

Jouw team is onderdeel van de vakgroep IT Operations. Het beheer en de support voor de financiële applicaties vindt plaats in het team Financiën, Inkoop en Projecten (FP&I). Je werkt hier samen met 5 functioneel applicatiebeheerders, een product owner, een scrummaster en een business analist. Gezamenlijk ben je verantwoordelijk voor de veiligheid, continuïteit en de kwaliteit van de gegevens in de software voor projectadministratie, declaraties, financiële administratie en inkoop.

Finding the environmental causes of childhood and early-onset cancer (CUE-CAN)

Where you’ll work

You’ll join the Molecular Epidemiology and Data Science group at the Institute for Risk Assessment Sciences (IRAS) of Utrecht University, where Dr. Martijn Kolijn leads the cancer projects. The group is part of the One Health Chemical research line of Prof. Roel Vermeulen, where epidemiologists, exposure scientists and data scientists study how chemicals and other environmental factors affect health. You’ll be based at the Utrecht Science Park.

Your project
Within CUE-CAN, the Utrecht team leads the search for new carcinogens. Your focus is on the internal exposome. You'll analyse untargeted liquid and gas chromatography high-resolution mass spectrometry (LC-HRMS and GC-HRMS) data from 4,000 maternal blood samples collected during pregnancy, covering children who later developed leukaemia, lymphoma or tumours of the central nervous system, plus healthy controls. Together, these methods measure around 700 exogenous chemicals, including environmental pollutants such as PFAS, and give a broad picture of endogenous molecules, so you can also study how exposures interact with biological processes in the body. The HRMS data are generated by others, so your work is the analysis, not the lab. A postdoc in our team maps the external exposome (geospatial, environmental and occupational exposures). You'll work closely with them to connect what you find in blood with what mothers were exposed to.

What you’ll do
You will:

• Analyse the LC-HRMS and GC-HRMS data to find chemicals in maternal blood linked to childhood and early-onset cancer;
• Use statistical and machine-learning methods, including mixture models, to identify and validate environmental risk factors;
• Link high-resolution exposure maps (from projects such as EXPANSE and EXPOSOME-NL) to study participants and to large Dutch registry cohorts (CBS, IKNL);
• Combine internal (blood-based) and external (environmental) exposome data to build a fuller picture of how the environment contributes to cancer;
• Work with PhD students and postdocs across CUE-CAN, including researchers at the Princess Máxima Center who will test your candidate carcinogens in the lab;
• Publish your results and present them at international conferences.

PhD position in health effects from the exposure to pesticides

Pesticides are applied to crops to protect them from weeds, insects, fungi and other pests that reduce yield. Because they're used widely around the world, people are exposed to them chronically. This has raised concerns about health effects, especially for people who live close to treated fields.

In this project, we collect data from children taking part in the national OBO2 study. We use biomonitoring to measure their current pesticide exposure and link it to their brain function, which we assess with a test battery. We also apply geospatial exposure estimates developed within the OBO2 consortium to the school results of all children in the Netherlands. In your PhD project, you'll analyse both data sources to investigate possible health effects of pesticide exposure. Two methodological challenges run through both studies. Children are exposed to many pesticides at once, so you'll use mixture modelling to estimate their combined effects rather than looking at one compound at a time. And because the data follow children and exposures over several years, you'll apply longitudinal methods to study how exposure relates to cognition and school performance over time. We're looking for a candidate with a strong background in epidemiology and quantitative methods, solid programming experience in R.

The project is part of a national research program on pesticides and health. For the analyses of child cognition, you’ll be part of a team of researchers, including other (PhD) students and external collaborators involved in the OBO-2 project (https://www.bestrijdingsmiddelen-omwonenden.nl/over-onderzoeken). You'll work within the dynamic One Health Chemical (OHC) group, which is performing interdisciplinary research to uncover environmental health determinants.

PhD Candidate in AI and Hardware Security

Join Us!
We are looking for a highly motivated candidate with a computer security and/or machine learning background to join the Parallel Computing Systems (PCS) group at the University of Amsterdam. We look for vulnerabilities of AI systems across the whole AI system: from adversarial examples, backdoors and model extraction attacks to physical side-channel and fault injection attacks on AI chips. We build defenses that are both robust and efficient. A strong background in machine learning, hardware or security, together with the drive to develop expertise in the other areas, is highly valued. You'll get hands-on access to the hardware lab and close supervision.

This is what you will do
In this project, you will work to secure AI hardware by investigating vulnerabilities at the algorithm, software, and hardware levels and developing countermeasures to address them. You will study how weaknesses in one layer can be exploited through another. For example, side-channel leakage from an accelerator can be used to extract neural network parameters.

Tasks and responsibilities:

• designing and carrying out realistic security evaluations on AI algorithms and hardware, such as model extraction, fault injection, and side-channel analysis, on platforms including NPUs, GPUs and other AI chips;
• investigating how vulnerabilities arise and how weaknesses at the algorithm, software, and hardware levels interact, and developing models and tools to explain these mechanisms;
• developing models and tools to explain why these vulnerabilities arise. Designing hardware-aware countermeasures that are robust, low-overhead and practical to deploy;
• validating your methods experimentally on real device in hardware lab, not only in simulation;
• publishing your results in leading international conference and journals, and completing a PhD thesis within four years;
• presenting your work at international venues and helping to build collaborations with academic and industrial partners;
• contributing to teaching (about 10% of your time), for example as a teaching assistant or by supervising Bachelor and Master students.

What we ask of you
Your experience and profile

• an MSc in computer science or a related field;
• a strong background and interest in AI and hardware security;
• a demonstrated ability to perform research (for instance in the form of publications or a Master thesis);
• the willingness to work collaboratively with other researchers;
• professional command of English and presentation skills

This is what we offer you
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 as soon as possible. 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.

The gross monthly salary, based on 38 hours per week and dependent on relevant experience, ranges between € 3,204 to € 4,051 (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 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 mission of the Informatics Institute (IvI) is to perform curiosity-driven and use-inspired fundamental research in Computer Science. The main research themes are Artificial Intelligence, Computational Science and Systems and Network Engineering. Our research involves complex information systems at large, with a focus on collaborative, data driven, computational and intelligent systems, all with a strong interactive component.

The Parallel Computing Systems (PCS) group at the University of Amsterdam performs research on the design, programming and run-time management of parallel and distributed computer systems. The modeling, analysis and optimization of the extra-functional aspects of these systems, such as performance, power/energy consumption, thermals, reliability, and security but also the degree of productivity to design and program these systems, play a pivotal role in this work.

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