Privacy-Preserving AI and Knowledge Graphs for Energy Digital Twins

Do you want to contribute to the future of sustainable energy systems while addressing fundamental challenges in privacy, trust, and explainability?

A 4-year full-time, fully-funded PhD position is available at the Knowledge in Artificial Intelligence (KAI) group and the User-Centric Data Science (UCDS) group of the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, in close collaboration with TU Delft and societal partners including the Municipality of Alkmaar and Arnhem Electricity Campus, as part of the NWO-funded KIC project FEDERATE: Fair Energy Data Environments for Renewable Autonomous Twin Empowerment.

The energy transition increasingly relies on data-driven digital twins that integrate information from municipalities, energy providers, grid operators, and other stakeholders. While sharing data enables better planning, optimization, and decision-making, it also raises important challenges regarding privacy, data ownership, regulatory compliance, and trust.

As a PhD candidate, you will develop novel AI and semantic technologies for privacy-preserving knowledge sharing in federated energy-data environments. Your research will focus on combining knowledge graphs, ontologies, knowledge representation and reasoning, machine unlearning, and formal reasoning to enable the selective removal of sensitive information while preserving the usefulness of shared knowledge.

Your duties
You will investigate how formal forgetting techniques, such as uniform interpolation and ontology forgetting, can be adapted to large-scale knowledge graphs and digital twins. In particular, you will explore:

• Modular ontology engineering and sensitivity modelling for energy-data ecosystems
• Formal forgetting and machine unlearning techniques for knowledge graphs and ontologies
• Temporal unlearning mechanisms for enforcing data-retention and privacy policies
• Privacy-preserving reasoning and federated knowledge graph infrastructures
• Formal verification techniques to certify that deleted knowledge cannot be reconstructed through logical inference
• Neuro-symbolic or machine unlearning approaches for privacy preserve
• Auditable and GDPR-compliant AI systems for trustworthy data sharing

The project combines theoretical advances in Knowledge Representation and Reasoning with real-world validation in energy-transition use cases. You will collaborate closely with researchers from Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and TU Delft, as well as stakeholders from municipalities and energy innovation ecosystems.

Towards the end of your PhD, you will evaluate your methods in realistic pilot environments involving municipal and energy-campus data, contributing directly to trustworthy and responsible AI solutions for the energy transition.

Our PhD students are expected to publish their research at leading venues in Artificial Intelligence, Knowledge Representation, Semantic Technologies, and Machine Learning, including AAAI, IJCAI, ECAI, NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR, ACL, EMNLP, KR, ISWC, ESWC, The Web Conference (WWW), and other top international conferences and journals.

Dierverzorger

Als dierverzorger zorg je voor het welzijn en de verzorging van de proefdieren. En samen met je collega’s zorg je voor een veilige en schone werkomgeving. Je komt te werken op een splinternieuwe locatie die voldoet aan de nieuwste wensen en eisen rondom het huisvesten van proefdieren. Je werkt in een veilige werkomgeving die volledig is ingericht op het reduceren van blootstelling aan allergenen en het verbeteren van ergonomisch werken, conform de laatste eisen aan dierhuisvesting. Dit is terug te zien in werken onder laminaire flow, een semi-geautomatiseerde wasstraat en gedeeltelijke dierhuisvesting in DVC.

Jouw verantwoordelijkheden

• Huisvesten en verzorgen van de proefdieren
• Reinigen en desinfecteren van de dierenverblijven en materialen
• Informatie over de dieren noteren in het digitaal diermanagementsysteem (Tick@lab)
• Het lezen, begrijpen en werken volgens SOP’s en/of werkprotocollen
• Weekenddiensten draaien (eens in de zoveel weken)

Postdoc: Monetary Valuation of Rangeland Restoration in East Africa

Kenya faces high drought and land degradation risks. Nature-based solutions such as water bunds restore soil moisture retention capacity, enhance rangeland conditions, and improve livelihoods. Though promising, these solutions need scaling across landscapes and communities to deliver widespread benefits, which in turn requires understanding of adoption behaviour by communities and individuals.

In this Postdoc you will identify values, barriers and opportunities to adoption of water bunds. You will conduct fieldwork in Kenya and develop a deliberative monetary valuation study, including both discrete choice experiment and deliberative discussions. You will analyse choice data to willingness to pay for bunds, and to understand how different social groups value bunds, and what expertise and knowledge as well as scaling tools may trigger adoption behaviour.

The Postdoc is part of the SwaRM project (Scaling Water bunds for climate Resilience Management in Kenyan rainfed agri-food systems). This NWO (NL-CGIAR) funded research project aims to understand water bunds adoption behaviour by communities and individuals and identify efficient and equitable scaling pathways of nature-based water retention practices. In the project we will work closely with researchers from the International Water Management Institute (IWMI) and Tegemeo Institute (Nairobi). Furthermore, we will work with Justdiggit, a Dutch African INGO that promotes water bunds in partnership with Kenyan NGOs.

Your duties

• You apply deliberative monetary valuation (DMV) methos– develop protocol, organise data collection, collect and analyse data
• You contribute to project management and collaboration
• You support outreach through publications and stakeholder events
• You contribute to teaching at IVM

Postdoc: (Co)benefits of nature-based solutions for climate change adaptation

The Institute for Environmental Studies (IVM) has a new position for a postdoctoral (PD) researcher in the field of environmental economics. The PD will become part of a new 4 year interdisciplinary research program (GRACE) funded by Horizon Europe, which aims to study and assess climate change adaptation (CCA) solutions in remote EU regions. The CCA solutions proposed are expected to generate benefits both at the local scale in remote local communities, and co-benefits at the wider scale of the territories, including its urban and peri-urban areas. The specific co-benefits depend strongly on the specific problem and CCA solution, but may include improved water quality, lower flood risk, traded goods with regional markets such as agroforestry/pastoral products, and recreational benefits related to biodiversity and landscape management.

An important part of the project is co-design of research and co-creation of knowledge with a wide variety of consortium partners from various EU regions. An inter- or multidisciplinary background and good communication skills are therefore important assets. In this position the PD will collaborate with various EU regions and associated stakeholders to assist them in the generation and application of findings in a cost-benefit framework to assess economic viability of CCA solutions. You will lead the valuation work, using new surveys and benefit transfer techniques. The PD will be supervised by Dr Marije Schaafsma and Dr Mark Koetse.

Your duties

• You design and implement survey-based valuation for valuation of key CCA benefits and co-benefits
• You publish research results in international peer-reviewed journals and policy-oriented journals
• You teach in Bachelor and/or Master’s educational programmes and supervise Bachelor and Master students
• You contribute to project tasks, milestones and deliverables, and contribute to project management, meetings and activities (e.g., workshop organisation)

Junior Teaching Position at the Department of Communication Science

We are looking for a recent graduate who wants to join our department as junior teacher, starting August 15th, 2026.

As a junior teacher you will be mainly involved in teaching in our Bachelor’s Programme in Communication Science, which has both an English and a Dutch track. Project-based learning and active teaching methods are key in our programme. Contact between teachers and students is important to us.

Your duties

• prepare and supervise work groups in several courses within our programmes;
• supervise bachelor theses;
• grade papers and prepare exams;
• act as a mentor for bachelor students;
• carry out coordination and administrative tasks for the benefit of education within our programmes;
• participate in development and innovation teams and projects on educational innovation;
• engage in self-development by partaking in the University Teaching Qualification programme.