PhD candidate in stem cell modeling and neuro-epigenomics

As a PhD candidate in this project, you will spearhead an innovative research line investigating why disease-causing variants in the same gene lead to highly diverse clinical outcomes, particularly regarding epilepsy and treatment responsiveness. You will be fully embedded within the collaborative SETD1AB consortium established between UMC Utrecht (PIs Dr. Onur Başak, Dr. Antón-Bolaños) and Erasmus MC (PI Dr. Stefan Barakat, consortium member Dr. Kristina Lanko), working alongside dedicated technicians and an active, supportive team of peer PhD students. This is a full-time position.

Your core activities will include:
o Human Brain Modeling: Generating and maintaining patient-stratified iPSC lines and innovative 3D "brain chimeroid" models.

o Advanced Neurophysiology: Assessing functional network activity and synaptic dynamics using high-density 3D Multi-Electrode Arrays (3D-MEAs) — done in close collaboration with experts, providing full support as you learn to analyze this data.

o Multi-Omic Profiling: Performing and analyzing state-of-the-art single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) alongside bulk and single-cell epigenomic assays.

o Data Integration: Collaborating with data scientists to map molecular signatures to clinical patient-level trajectories.

Who we are looking for:
We welcome applicants with a Master's degree in developmental biology, stem cell biology, neuroscience, bioinformatics, or a related biomedical discipline. If you possess hands-on experience in cell culture, molecular biology, or data analysis, that is fantastic—but please note that we do not expect you to master all these technologies on day one. We encourage you to specialize in the areas you are most passionate about. Because we are expanding the team with a second PhD student later on, you will work in tandem to share the workload, allowing you to focus on your strengths while leveraging the broader expertise of the consortium. We highly value curiosity, an open mind, and a collaborative spirit over a checklist of pre-existing skills. We provide extensive, structured training and mentorship for all the computational and wet-lab techniques used in this project. If you are deeply passionate about neurodevelopmental research and eager to learn within a supportive environment, we strongly encourage you to apply.

Our Commitment to Diversity & Inclusion:
Our consortium thrives on a variety of perspectives. We are committed to building an inclusive environment that welcomes and celebrates neurodiverse individuals, women, minorities, and applicants from all cultural backgrounds. We recognize that brilliant scientists come in many forms, and we evaluate candidates based on their potential, growth mindset, and passion for discovery.

Research Technician In Integrated Photonics Technology

The Photonic Integration group is looking for a hands-on Research Technician / Process Line Technician to strengthen the shared cleanroom process capability for integrated photonics. The role is part of the group-level technology infrastructure and is focused on process operations, process stability, documentation, and continuous improvement of the process technologies within the integrated photonics process line. The technological work will be carried out in our cleanroom facilities at Nanolab@TU/e (www.tue.nl/nanolab).

This position is defined at the level of shared process capability rather than direct execution of individual project tasks. The technician will help ensure that key process modules are available, reproducible and well documented across multiple research projects across the group. This role is not intended as dedicated fabrication support for a single project or individual researcher. Project interaction is expected and necessary, but the primary responsibility is to maintain and improve shared process capability for the PIC process baseline.

Your day-to-day responsibilities will include:

• Process operations for selected process clusters within integrated circuit line (e.g. plasma tools or metals or lithography)
• Monitoring and improving process stability at cluster level, and supporting root-cause analysis when process deviations occur.
• Implement the process line improvement strategy through co-definition of short-loop experiments with the line manager
• Implementation of selected short-loop experiments to understand and extend process capabilities with equipment manufacturer(s)
• Coordinate the documentation of process modules
• Perform periodic process flows at the cluster level with multi-project wafers

You will work within a team of research technicians, who are led by a line manager and a group scientific staff. You cooperate with team members to contribute to the baseline technologies complementarily. You also interact and coordinate with the Nanolab cleanroom staff, who own the responsibilities of tool maintenance and repairment, for the tasks of recipe/process-level monitoring and control.

Sustainable Business Lecturer

The Business Management and Organisation Group (BMO) at Wageningen University and Research is looking for an enthusiastic and ambitious lecturer in management (and organisational) research to join the team. The position contains an essential role within our curricular management education and within the supervision of bachelor thesis, master thesis, and research internship students, and may develop into an exciting and unique lecturer career track within the group.

As a lecturer, you are devoted to, and have the relevant background needed, to educate students in advanced management theories, in applying management theories in solving societal problems, and in developing (educational) research projects (including theory application and data collection) related to management and organisational studies. The focus of our teaching is to train students to develop research projects where they can solve real-life problems by applying theories and collecting and analyzing data related to management and organisational research. The successful applicant will make an essential contribution to this development, and will organize courses (e.g., “Advanced Business Research”, “Business Theories and Sustainability”), deliver lectures, and give tutorials. Moreover, the position entails management tasks that are essential for BMO, such as internship/thesis coordinator. You will make essential contributions to the development of our new BSc programs and be given the opportunity to attain the nationally recognized Dutch university teaching qualification (UTQ).

Your duties and responsibilities include:

• prepare and deliver lectures to undergraduate or graduate students on topics such as sustainable business, agricultural business management, strategic management, organizational behavior, innovation management and business studies;
• evaluate and grade students' class work, assignments, and papers, as well as initiate, facilitate, and moderate classroom discussions, focusing on students;
• prepare course materials, such as syllabi, homework assignments, and handouts;
• coordinate the BMO theses trajectories and/or bachelor redesign across staff and students;
• supervise bachelor thesis, master thesis, and internship thesis students, and keep abreast of developments in the field by reading current literature, talking with colleagues, and participating in professional organizations and conferences.

PhD Position: Engineering Trustworthy Energy Data Spaces

PhD Position: Engineering Trustworthy Energy Data Spaces for Heat Transition Planning

How can heterogeneous energy data be shared securely and efficiently to accelerate the heat transition?

The transition to sustainable heating requires close collaboration between municipalities, distribution system operators (DSOs), households and other stakeholders. Effective planning depends on the ability to share and combine data from diverse sources, including building characteristics, energy infrastructure, flexibility resources and operational measurements. However, these data are often fragmented across organizations and difficult to exchange due to interoperability challenges, privacy concerns, governance requirements and heterogeneous information systems.

As a PhD candidate, you will engineer the next generation of energy data orchestration solutions for heat transition planning. Building on emerging data space principles, your research will investigate how energy data can be shared securely, interoperably, and efficiently across distributed stakeholders while preserving privacy and supporting future energy applications. Rather than simply implementing existing data space reference architectures, you will develop novel methods, architectural patterns, and engineering approaches that enable trusted data sharing across complex energy ecosystems.

The project
You will join the newly funded NWO (Dutch Research Council) KIC project Sharing the Warmth, an interdisciplinary collaboration between Wageningen University, TU Delft, Hogeschool Utrecht, CWI, Dutch municipalities, DSOs and other societal/industry partners. The project brings together expertise in energy informatics, software engineering, data science, governance and social sciences to develop trusted data-sharing solutions for the heat transition.

Within the project, you will have the opportunity to collaborate with other PhD candidates and a postdoctoral researcher working on complementary topics including decision-making under data-sharing constraints, privacy-preserving data sharing, governance and citizen participation. You will also have access to real-world use cases and operational datasets through our network of municipalities, DSOs and industrial/societal partners.

Your research
Your research will investigate how energy data spaces can be engineered to support data-sharing for sustainable heat transition planning. You will explore questions such as:

• How can heterogeneous data from municipalities, DSOs, households, and other stakeholders be represented and orchestrated to support interoperable data sharing?
• How can trustworthy energy data spaces be designed to balance interoperability, scalability, privacy, performance and transparency for different stakeholders?
• How can privacy-preserving mechanisms and AI-assisted data engineering support secure and efficient data sharing while fostering trust and responsible data use?
• How can data orchestration and interoperability solutions better support the information needs and decision-making practices of municipalities, DSOs, and citizens?
• Which architectural patterns and data orchestration mechanisms best support future energy applications and evolving data ecosystems?

Depending on the research direction, you may employ techniques from software architecture, distributed systems, data engineering, semantic interoperability, privacy-preserving data analytics, artificial intelligence or related fields.

Your duties and responsibilities in this 4-year project include:

• analysing data requirements, heterogeneous data sources, and interoperability challenges for heat transition planning;
• designing and implementing trustworthy data orchestration mechanisms based on energy data space principles;
• developing methods for semantic interoperability, data integration, and API-based data exchange across systems involved;
• integrating and evaluating privacy-preserving technologies and AI-assisted data engineering techniques within energy data spaces;
• collaborating with municipalities, DSOs, households, and industry partners to ensure that data-sharing solutions address real-world user needs and stakeholder requirements;
• evaluating the proposed data orchestration solutions through technical validation and real-world case studies with municipalities, DSOs, and other project partners;
• publishing your research in leading international journals and presenting your work at international conferences.

You will work here
This PhD position is embedded in the Information Technology Group at Wageningen University. You will collaborate closely with researchers, societal and industry partners within the NWO (Dutch Research Council) funded research project Sharing the Warmth, led by Dr. Tarek Alskaif.

Intended start date: November 2026.

PhD position: Decision-Making for Heat Transition Planning

PhD Position: Decision-Making for Heat Transition Planning under Data Sharing Constraints

Can grid operators and other stakeholders make robust decisions when the data they need cannot always be shared?

The transition to sustainable heating is one of the biggest challenges of the energy transition. Increasing electrification through technologies such as heat pumps creates new planning and congestion challenges for electricity distribution grids. At the same time, effective planning depends on access to data from multiple stakeholders - including municipalities, distribution system operators (DSOs), and households. However, such data are often fragmented, privacy-sensitive, or unavailable due to technical, legal and organizational constraints.

As a PhD candidate, you will develop novel decision-making methods that enable robust decisions for heat transition planning despite these data-sharing constraints. Rather than assuming full access to data, your research will investigate how planning and operational decisions can be improved when information is incomplete, uncertain, decentralized or privacy-preserved.

The project
You will join the newly funded NWO (Dutch Research Council) KIC project Sharing the Warmth, an interdisciplinary collaboration between Wageningen University, TU Delft, Hogeschool Utrecht, CWI, Dutch municipalities, DSOs, and other societal/industry partners. The project brings together expertise in energy informatics, optimization, data science, social sciences, and governance to develop trusted data-sharing solutions for the heat transition.

Within the project, you will have the opportunity to collaborate with other PhD candidates and a postdoctoral researcher working on complementary topics including energy data spaces, privacy-preserving data-sharing, governance, and citizen participation. You will also have access to real-world use cases and operational datasets through our network of municipalities, DSOs and industrial partners.

Your research
Your research will investigate how data-sharing constraints shape decision-making for the heat transition in future electricity networks, using flexible electrification technologies with heat pumps as the primary use case. The research will consider not only technical data availability, but also the governance, privacy and stakeholder requirements that determine how data can be shared and used in practice.

You will explore questions such as:

• What data do municipalities, DSOs, and other stakeholders need for heat transition planning, and how do data ownership and governance arrangements shape the opportunities and barriers for data-sharing?
• How do incomplete, uncertain, or privacy-preserved data influence heat transition planning?
• How can DSOs and municipalities make robust decisions under realistic data-sharing constraints?
• How can flexibility from distributed energy resources be coordinated while respecting data-sharing requirements?
• How can decision-making methods account for varying levels of trust, transparency, and willingness to share data among stakeholders?
• What decision-making methods are most effective when information is decentralized or only partially observable?

Depending on the research direction, you may employ techniques from mathematical modelling, machine learning, uncertainty quantification, distributed decision-making, or other data-driven approaches.

Your duties and responsibilities in this 4-year project include:

• analysing data requirements, data availability, and socio-technical barriers to data-sharing for heat transition planning;
• investigating how incomplete or constrained data influence planning and operational decision-making;
• modelling the flexibility of heat pumps and other distributed energy resources for congestion management and heat transition planning;
• working together with interdisciplinary researchers to translate stakeholder needs and data-sharing requirements into decision-support methods;
• developing novel decision-making methods for electricity networks with flexible electrification technologies;
• evaluating and validating the proposed methods using realistic datasets and case studies with municipalities and DSOs;
• publishing your research in leading international journals and presenting your work at international conferences.

You will work here
This PhD position is embedded in the Information Technology Group at Wageningen University. You will collaborate closely with researchers, societal and industry partners within the NWO (Dutch Research Council) funded research project Sharing the Warmth, led by Dr. Tarek Alskaif.

Intended start date: November 2026.