Environmental Fate Modeller

Are you passionate about modelling the behaviour of chemicals in soil and water to support sustainable agriculture and environmental protection? Do you want to turn complex system understanding into insights that shape policy and safeguard ecosystems? Do you enjoy working in multidisciplinary teams with high societal impact?

Then this position at the Environmental Risk Assessment (ERA) team at Wageningen Environmental Research (WENR) might be perfect for you.

Your Job
We support policymakers by providing science-based tools and methods for environmental risk assessment in the regulatory context.

Our projects operate at the forefront of science, aiming to uncover new pathways and methodologies that will shape future ERA.

We develop advanced and integrated models and approaches at both local and landscape scales covering the pathways of chemicals to the environment, the fate as well as the impact on non-target organisms.

You will contribute to risk assessment projects within the Environmental Risk Assessment team. You will be responsible for model development, modelling, programming, and interpreting results to support regulatory and research objectives.

Your duties and responsibilities include:

• develop and apply environmental fate and behaviour models for soil, surface water, and groundwater systems;
• implement and improve model algorithms;
• analyse and interpret simulation results for risk assessments;
• collaborate with multidisciplinary teams on exposure and ecotoxicology projects;
• contribute to scientific publications and strategic development.

Your Team
You will work with the Environmental Risk Assessment team at Wageningen Environmental Research, a leading group of experts in pesticide risk assessment and modelling. The team consists of 30+ professionals collaborating with government, NGOs, and industry.

Assistent Professor in Pfilosophy of the Life Sciences

Are you seeking a challenging role in a nurturing and collegial setting that supports rigorous philosophical teaching and research as well as opportunities for productive collaborations with social and life scientists? Are you an outstanding early career researcher whose focus is philosophy of the life sciences, biotechnologies, or related areas, grounded in fields such as epistemology, philosophy of science, social/political philosophy, ontology, or ethics? The Philosophy group at Wageningen University & Research offers an exciting opportunity to make significant impacts and build a successful academic career in a supportive and welcoming setting.

You will work in the Philosophy group
This position is in the Philosophy (PHI) group which is led by Prof. Rachel A. Ankeny. The PHI group is recognized for its cutting-edge research and innovative teaching in applied philosophy and philosophy of the life sciences in practice, drawing on multiple philosophical traditions and interdisciplinary methodologies, often in collaboration with natural scientists and incorporating empirical approaches.
The PHI group is embedded in Wageningen University, which is internationally renowned as a leading institution in the life sciences, particularly food, agriculture, and environmental sciences, and which prides itself on its excellence and impact. PHI is located within the Social Sciences Group (SSG) and has close relationships and collaborations with other groups in its section: Knowledge, Technology, and Innovation (KTI), Strategic Communications (COM), and Education and Learning Sciences (ELS).

The PHI group currently has the equivalent of 8 full-time academics (half conventional research/teaching mix, and half teaching focused) plus 2 part-time special professors, 4 postdoctoral researchers, 18 PhD candidates, and 2 support staff, who together support an active intellectual and productive working environment which is culturally and socially diverse. To further strengthen our research and education in this time of continued evolution and growth at WUR including in the PHI group, we are seeking applications for an Assistant Professor position.

As Assistant Professor in the PHI group, you will contribute to research, teaching including graduate training, PhD supervision, group administration, and engagement within and outside of the university (the typical split of responsibilities is 40% research, 40% teaching, and 20% administration, with details to be negotiated for the successful candidate). The language of instruction and the primary institutional language is English.

In this challenging career trajectory, your duties and responsibilities will include:

• conducting high-quality philosophical research and publishing in leading journals and with outstanding publishers in both philosophy and relevant scientific fields collaboratively and independently;
• acquiring, coordinating, and implementing innovative national and international funded research projects, and actively participating in larger collaborative research consortia;
• teaching and (re)developing courses in environmental and/or animal ethics, philosophy of the life sciences, philosophy of technology, philosophical issues in AI/data science, or related topics as part of the PHI minor or within natural or social science courses;
• supervising PhD candidates and MSc/BSc theses, and contributing to graduate-level training courses including research integrity and ethics, and/or ethics for social science research; and
• contributing to the further development of the PHI group including nurturing a supportive and productive working environment for all members, and fostering productive working relationships with other groups at WUR.

Technician cell culture and molecular biology

The Toxicology chair group’s research focusses on the development of next generation risk assessment (NGRA) approaches to characterise hazards, exposures and risks of chemicals in food and the environment. We are looking for a highly motivated and skilled technician in cell or molecular (laboratory) life sciences (master of applied sciences ).

In this position you will support our innovative research on how chemicals can cause harm. You will help develop, teach and ensure the quality of our research with advanced in vitro models for toxicity studies, including organoid and stem cell cultures.

Your duties and responsibilities include:

• Overall lab management, which includes maintaining consumable stocks, cell banks and equipment like flow cabinets and spectrophotometers
• The optimisation and application of biomolecular assays including, but not restricted to cell viability assays, qPCR, ELISA, comet assay, immunostainings and western blot
• Providing technical support of PhD students and Post Doctoral Fellows
• Training MSc students in cell culture and molecular biology techniques
• Preparation and assisting in the supervision of practical courses

Your team
The position is embedded within the chair group Toxicology. You will be part of a team of five lab technicians, each with their own focus and responsibility. In addition, the chair group consists of five scientific staff members, two secretaries and about 30 PhD-students and Postdocs. Annually 30 MSc students are supervised during their research thesis.

PhD position – Decoding One-Carbon Metabolism in Synthetic Acetogenic Cocultures

The project aims to elucidate how acetogenic bacteria, as well as defined cocultures of acetogens and chain-elongating partners, respond and adapt to dynamic syngas conditions. By combining steady-state cultivation, controlled perturbation experiments, and multi-omics analyses, you will unravel the metabolic mechanisms and microbial interactions that underpin robustness and resilience in syngas-fermenting systems.

You will work at the interface of microbial physiology, systems microbiology, and biotechnology, using chemostat-based cultivation and advanced analytical tools to link metabolic responses with physiological states. The insights gained will form the experimental foundation for metabolic modeling and bioengineering strategies developed in collaboration with international research partners.

This PhD position is part of the Novo Nordisk Foundation–funded interdisciplinary research program RECIPE (Towards Implementing Resilience: Identification and Mitigation of Chemical, Physical, and Biological Heterogeneity in Microbial Gas-Fermenting Bioreactors). The project is highly collaborative, offering opportunities to work closely with researchers at other leading European universities within the RECIPE consortium.

Key responsibilities:

• Perform chemostat-based cultivation of pure cultures of gas (H2, CO, CO2)-fermenting acetogens to study physiology under steady-state and perturbed conditions.
• Design and conduct controlled perturbation experiments (e.g., substrate limitation, pulsing, pH shifts, product inhibition) to probe metabolic and physiological resilience.
• Apply omics-based approaches to investigate microbial responses to perturbations.
• Establish and characterize synthetic cocultures of acetogens and chain-elongating bacteria to study metabolic interactions and cooperative robustness.
• Collaborate closely with systems biologists and modelers to integrate experimental data into metabolic and resilience models.
• Disseminate research findings through publications, conference presentations, and collaborative meetings.
• Contribute to teaching and supervision of students.

The research is embedded within the chair Microbiology (where you will join the Microbial Physiology group led by Prof. Dr. Diana Machado de Sousa.

WaterTechLab coördinator

In deze twee labs van het WaterTechLab wordt onderzoek gedaan naar nieuwe technologieën voor het terugwinnen van waardevolle stoffen uit afvalwater, naar het produceren van schoon water, en naar hydrologische processen in rivieren en delta’s. Hierbij is de link tussen waterkwaliteit en waterkwantiteit op thema’s als wetlands, emerging pollutants, en fluid mechanics van groot belang.

Binnen het team ben jij verantwoordelijk voor de ondersteuning van PhD en MSc studenten voor hun reactor-ontwerp, het introduceren en testen van nieuwe meetmethoden, overzicht houden over financiën, en het uitwisselen van kennis binnen het team.

Jouw taken en verantwoordelijkheden zijn:

• onderhoud en verbetering van labruimtes en materialen, in samenspraak met WUR Facility Services en externe firma’s;
• ondersteuning in het ontwerp, bouwen en trouble-shooten van reactoren en de daaraan gekoppelde uitrusting (pompen, sensoren, pH controllers) en data collectie, inclusief het bedenken van nieuwe meetmethoden;
• bijdragen aan practica en lab onderwijs aan BSc, MSc en PhD studenten.

Jouw team
Jij gaat samenwerken met een team van 3 a 4 onderzoekstechnici van het WaterTechLab, en hebt regelmatig contact met het team van 7 technici van het analytisch lab bij Milieutechnologie. Daarbij zul je regelmatig overleggen met PhD en MSc studenten en hun begeleiders uit de wetenschappelijke staf.