PhD Position in Deep Learning for Acoustic Sensor Fusion on Intelligent Vehicles

Job description
In this project you will develop novel AI and Deep Learning techniques for traffic detection using vehicle-mounted microphones, enhancing the perception capabilities of Advanced Driver-Assistance Systems (ADAS) and Automated Vehicles (AVs) beyond traditional camera, radar, and lidar sensors. Unlike these sensors, which require direct line-of-sight, acoustic detection captures traffic sounds like tire noise, sirens, and electric vehicle signals, enabling anticipation of unseen traffic in low-visibility scenarios. This additional sensing modality can improve driving safety, for instance by detecting approaching vehicles around corners or behind obstacles, and by localizing salient sounds such as sirens. Your research will explore new use cases of acoustic perception for advanced automated driving systems, and new methods for fusing sound with other sensor data for more robust environment perception through deep learning.

We offer a fully-funded 4-year PhD position at the Intelligent Vehicles Group in the Cognitive Robotics department of TU Delft. The group frequently publishes in top conferences and journals such as CVPR, ECCV, ICRA, IROS, T-IV, T-ITS, T-RO, T-PAMI. Your primary supervisor will be Dr. Julian Kooij. The project is co-funded and co-supervised by the Audio Innovation Center of NXP Semiconductors in Leuven (NASDAQ: NXPI). For your work you will have access to the compute resources of TU Delft, ranging from personal machines, to shared GPU servers, the Delft AI Cluster that is shared across departments, as well as DelftBlue , which is one of the top 250 supercomputers in the world.

At the Intelligent Vehicles Group you'll find an open and friendly environment, with opportunities for professional development and training to successfully develop your academic skills. We have a collaborative culture regarding research, education, and use of lab resources. We interact on a daily basis and share a drive to strengthen the position of the group as a whole thanks to the growth of each member. In addition, you will have regular progress meetings with experts from NXP’s Audio Innovation Centre.

Research challenges
You will improve on state-of-the-art deep learning techniques for multi-sensor environment perception in autonomous driving by integrating acoustics. Possible research directions include the use of audio-visual foundation models, audio-driven sensor fusion for object detection, cross-modal representation learning, and self-supervised learning for this novel perception task. The developed models should provide holistic representations of all surrounding traffic by fusing multi-microphone data with other sensor modalities. Such holistic traffic representations support many driving tasks at once, as required for full self-driving. The addition of acoustics should improve the robustness of the existing sensor suite.

A unique asset is the IV group’s Prius demonstrator vehicle with cameras, lidars, radars, and a roof-mounted microphone array. It provides you unique multi-sensor data to investigate and demonstrate how acoustics can improve vehicle perception tasks, for which you collaborate with another PhD candidate in this project. Together with other researchers in the IV group, you help develop and maintain the software for this shared demonstrator vehicle.

Job requirements

• Completed (or about to complete) a MSc degree related to any of: artificial intelligence, machine learning, intelligent vehicles / robotics, acoustics and signal processing, computer vision.
• Demonstratable experience in applying Deep Learning, using PyTorch, TensorFlow, JAX on real-world sensor data.
• Experience with robotic/vehicle perception tasks with computer vision, lidar or radar. Experience in acoustic perception is a plus.
• Knowledge of the Robot Operating System (ROS), and signal processing, is a plus.
• Good theoretic understanding of the fundamentals of Machine Learning.
• Ability to act independently as well as to collaborate effectively with members of a larger interdisciplinary team, take initiative, be result oriented, organized and creative.
• Excellent programming skills (Python, possibly also C/C++).
• Good command of verbal and written English.

TU Delft (Delft University of Technology)
Delft University of Technology is built on strong foundations. As creators of the world-famous Dutch waterworks and pioneers in biotech, TU Delft is a top international university combining science, engineering and design. It delivers world class results in education, research and innovation to address challenges in the areas of energy, climate, mobility, health and digital society. For generations, our engineers have proven to be entrepreneurial problem-solvers, both in business and in a social context.

At TU Delft we embrace diversity as one of our core values and we actively engage to be a university where you feel at home and can flourish. We value different perspectives and qualities. We believe this makes our work more innovative, the TU Delft community more vibrant and the world more just. Together, we imagine, invent and create solutions using technology to have a positive impact on a global scale. That is why we invite you to apply. Your application will receive fair consideration.

Challenge. Change. Impact!

Faculty Mechanical Engineering
From chip to ship. From machine to human being. From idea to solution. Driven by a deep-rooted desire to understand our environment and discover its underlying mechanisms, research and education at the ME faculty focusses on fundamental understanding, design, production including application and product improvement, materials, processes and (mechanical) systems.

ME is a dynamic and innovative faculty with high-tech lab facilities and international reach. It’s a large faculty but also versatile, so we can often make unique connections by combining different disciplines. This is reflected in ME’s outstanding, state-of-the-art education, which trains students to become responsible and socially engaged engineers and scientists. We translate our knowledge and insights into solutions to societal issues, contributing to a sustainable society and to the development of prosperity and well-being. That is what unites us in pioneering research, inspiring education and (inter)national cooperation.

Click here to go to the website of the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering. Do you want to experience working at our faculty? These videos will introduce you to some of our researchers and their work.

PhD positions on Design for Repair and Remanufacturing using Additive Manufacturing

Job description

We are looking for two PhD candidates who will contribute to the ADD-reAM project, a large NWO-funded interdisciplinary program with TU Delft, UTwente, TU Eindhoven, Erasmus University Rotterdam, ULeiden, Saxion University of Applied Sciences and many partnering associations and companies.

ADD-reAM aims to revolutionize how industries manage resources and reduce waste by integrating Additive Manufacturing (AM) into repair and remanufacturing, thus contributing to a greener and more resilient economy. The research focusses on developing the next-generation AM, product design strategies and methods for repair and remanufacturing using AM, and investigates regulatory, economic, political, environmental, and social innovations needed to implement the project’s innovations. Using AM for spare part production can ensure that spare parts are available for a long time, even after warranty ends. Instead of keeping a large inventory of physical spare parts, a digital file of each spare part can be stored online and produced on demand. This will save costs and waste from unused parts while making them available for a longer period. An additional design objective is to enable automated repair and remanufacturing to increase the economic viability of these strategies.

Your research will investigate how product design can enable both repair, which ususally is a manual operation, and remanufacturing, which preferably is automated. This implies that the design of parts should enable mass production as well as production of functionally equivalent spare parts with additive manufacturing. Further, disassembly and reassembly should be able to be carried out both manually and automated. The obtained insights will be incorporated in design methods and should fit the workflow of designers.

The PhD-1 position will focus on design aspects that determine feasibility of remanufacturing and upgrading, for replacement spare parts as well as reconstructed parts. This implies that in the design phase of a product, design facilitates the production of 3D-printed spare parts with equivalent functionality as well as automated disassembly and reassembly. Further, more strategic design aspects related to business models that stimulate repair and remanufacturing will be addressed.

The PhD-2 position wil establish a comprehensive framework for product repairability and remanufacturability, specifically focsuing on the product archirecture and automated disassembly. The ease of repair and remanufacturing will be analysed with a focus on identifying AM-related bottlenecks in the repair and remanufacturing process. Further, this reasearch will result in a method to guide designers to improve rmanual repairability as well as automated remanufacturability. Finally, insight in tensions between repair, remanufacturin, and recycling will be balanced in a strategy for long-lifetime products.

Case-studies will be defined during the project, in close collaboration with the consortium.

Job requirements
Essential qualifications:

• A completed MSc degree in Industrial Design Engineering, Mechanical engineering, or a related field.
• Experience with AM and/or product architecture design
• Experience with quantitative and qualitative research, such as exoperiments, interviews, contextual inquiry, observations, questionnaires
• Familiarity with design methods
• Strong conceptual and analytical skills, and the ability to translate abstract frameworks into real-world application.
• Excellent communication skills in English (spoken and written).

Preferred qualifications:

• Experience in interdisciplinary or transdisciplinary collaboration.
• An independent, flexible, and collaborative working style.

Application Information

When applying, please clearly indicate whether you are applying for PhD-1, PhD-2, or both. Applications without this indication may not be considered.

TU Delft (Delft University of Technology)
Delft University of Technology is built on strong foundations. As creators of the world-famous Dutch waterworks and pioneers in biotech, TU Delft is a top international university combining science, engineering and design. It delivers world class results in education, research and innovation to address challenges in the areas of energy, climate, mobility, health and digital society. For generations, our engineers have proven to be entrepreneurial problem-solvers, both in business and in a social context.

At TU Delft we embrace diversity as one of our core values and we actively engage to be a university where you feel at home and can flourish. We value different perspectives and qualities. We believe this makes our work more innovative, the TU Delft community more vibrant and the world more just. Together, we imagine, invent and create solutions using technology to have a positive impact on a global scale. That is why we invite you to apply. Your application will receive fair consideration.

Challenge. Change. Impact!

Faculty Industrial Design Engineering
Matching the evolution of people with the speed of the revolution of technology. This is the focus of the Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering (IDE). Delft designers act as a bridge between advances in technology and the needs of people, organisations and society to create products, services and systems with purpose.IDE is a leader in design research across the application areas of mobility, sustainability and health, as well as its development of design tools and methods. A 350-strong research team and over 2,000 students work together in our inspiring hall, labs and studios.In close cooperation with industry, the public sector and NGOs we rehearse possible futures in research and education to design for a complex future.

Click here to go to the website of the Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering.

PhD Identifying Collective Values Amongst Housing Collectives for Sustainability Transitions

Job description

Project Overview
This position is part of the NWO-funded ECCO (Empowering Citizen COllectives in societal transitions) project, a groundbreaking collaboration between five leading Dutch universities. ECCO investigates how citizen collectives—grassroots organizations formed by citizens working together on shared goals—can become powerful drivers of societal change in areas such as housing, work, income, and sustainability. The project examines how these collectives can partner effectively with governments to address pressing challenges, from climate change to social inequality. Within ECCO, 11 PhD researchers will form a cohort working collaboratively across disciplines and institutions. This particular position will be hosted at the Department of Management in the Built Environment (MBE), Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment, TU Delft.

Your Role
As PhD researcher, you will investigate how housing collectives identify societal shortcomings and embody alternative values such as solidarity, collectivity, sustainability, and care. Your research will focus on understanding participants’ motivations and values, and on how diverse groups can develop a unified identity that strengthens their voice in governance.

You will employ methods including the Means-End Chains method, collaborative ethnography, and data analysis. Working closely with societal partners such as Cooplink, Ecodorpen, and the Knarrenhof Foundation, you will map collective values and design pathways for housing collectives to influence housing policy and sustainability transitions.

This position is ideal for candidates motivated by housing justice, collective agency, and values-based approaches to systemic change. You will be supervised by Dr. Darinka Czischke (main promotor) and Prof. Tine de Moor (co-promotor). In addition to being part of the ECCO PhD cohort, you will be affiliated with the Co-Lab Research Group at TU Delft, where you will have the opportunity to collaborate with other PhD researchers working on related subjects in the Netherlands and internationally.

Key Responsibilities

• Conduct research through qualitative and quantitative methods, including interviews, surveys, and workshops.
• Develop the Collective Values Navigator, a digital co-creation tool.
• Create a roadmap to enhance housing collectives’ performance and impact
• Facilitate sense-making sessions with diverse stakeholders.
• Collaborate with fellow PhD researchers within the ECCO consortium.

Job requirements

• Academic background in social sciences (e.g. sociology, anthropology), management sciences, organisational studies, or human geography, with experience or affinity for housing studies.
• Strong methodological skills in both qualitative and quantitative research, including:

1. Survey and interview methods.
2. Focus groups and workshop facilitation.
3. Experience with qualitative analysis software (e.g., Atlas.ti, NVivo).
4. Proficiency in Excel, SPSS, and other statistical tools.
5. Full fluency in English; proficiency in Dutch is highly desirable.
6. Ability to communicate complex findings to diverse audiences.
7. Excellent organizational and teamwork skills.

This is a unique opportunity to contribute to cutting-edge research on housing collectives and sustainability transitions, while being part of a vibrant international consortium.  

TU Delft (Delft University of Technology)
Delft University of Technology is built on strong foundations. As creators of the world-famous Dutch waterworks and pioneers in biotech, TU Delft is a top international university combining science, engineering and design. It delivers world class results in education, research and innovation to address challenges in the areas of energy, climate, mobility, health and digital society. For generations, our engineers have proven to be entrepreneurial problem-solvers, both in business and in a social context.

At TU Delft we embrace diversity as one of our core values and we actively engage to be a university where you feel at home and can flourish. We value different perspectives and qualities. We believe this makes our work more innovative, the TU Delft community more vibrant and the world more just. Together, we imagine, invent and create solutions using technology to have a positive impact on a global scale. That is why we invite you to apply. Your application will receive fair consideration.

Challenge. Change. Impact!

Faculty Architecture & the Built Environment
The Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment has a leading role in education and research worldwide. The driving force behind the faculty’s success is its robust research profile combined with the energy and creativity of its student body and academic community. It is buzzing with energy from early in the morning until late at night, with four thousand people studying, working, designing, conducting research and acquiring and disseminating knowledge. Our faculty has a strong focus on 'design-oriented research’, which has given it a top position in world rankings.

Staff and students are working to improve the built environment with the help of a broad set of disciplines, including architectural design, urban planning, building technology, social sciences, process management, and geo-information science. The faculty works closely with other faculties, universities, private parties, and the public sector, and has an extensive network in the Netherlands as well as internationally.

Click here to go to the website of the Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment.

PhD Position Bio-inspired Aerial Perching with Drones for Wildlife Conservation

Job description

We are seeking a motivated PhD candidate to join a multidisciplinary project at the intersection of Robotics and wildlife conservation. The project aims to develop autonomous drones capable of perching on natural structures, inspired by the way birds rest on branches, enabling energy-efficient, quiet, and long-duration monitoring of ecosystems. The research will integrate novel lightweight perception modalities for robust perching in the wild, agile control algorithms, and environmental interaction strategies to support wildlife observation and sampling in natural habitats.

As part of the project, the PhD will interface with 11 PhDs from other disciplines, partecipate in field campaigns in Kenya, as well as dissemination and teaching activities. This PhD position is fully funded for 4 years.

About the Wildbotics project:

Wildbotics is a Marie-Curie Doctoral Network Program that employs 12 PhD candidates in 10 different countries in Europe. The overarching aim of WildBotics is to advance the digital revolution of nature conservation by integrating robotics, computer science, and conservation ecology, with autonomous robots as a unifying platform. The Doctoral Candidates will form an interdisciplinary network of researchers working across European, develop new autonomous systems (innovation in robotics), enhance sensor and software capabilities (innovation in computer science), and combine these to enable large-scale automated sampling to complement vision-based data in complex field settings (innovation in ecology).

Each of the 12 candidates will conduct research based in one of the three main subject areas of WildBotics: (i) Robot system design for nature conservation, (ii) Autonomy, perception and AI for complex natural environments and (iii) Analysis of large, sample-based datasets for wildlife ecology & biodiversity conservation. The candidates will work together within the WildBotics network and engage in multi-disciplinary training-by-research to develop technology in close collaboration with end-users around the world.

More information on the project is available here.

About the research lab:

The successful candidate will join the Biomorphic Intelligence Lab at TU Delft’s Faculty of Aerospace Engineering in the Netherlands. The lab focuses on the design and control of drones to enable physical interaction with their surroundings, powered by new concepts of bodily intelligence.

More information about the lab is available here.

Job requirements
Qualifications:

• Master degree in Robotics or Aerial Robotics.
• Strong programming skills (Python, C++, ROS).
• Excellent written and spoken English.
• Independent approach to work in research demonstrated by self-led projects.
• Availability to join field testing in Kenya.
• Experience with operating drones is desireable, but not essential.
• Interest in wildlife conservation and ecological applications.
• Ability to work independently and in interdisciplinary teams.

Eligibility requirment to join this MSCN project:

No residence or main activity (work, studies etc.) in the country of the recruiting beneficiary (The Netherlands) for more than 12 months in the 36 months before their recruitment date.

TU Delft
Delft University of Technology is built on strong foundations. As creators of the world-famous Dutch waterworks and pioneers in biotech, TU Delft is a top international university combining science, engineering and design. It delivers world class results in education, research and innovation to address challenges in the areas of energy, climate, mobility, health and digital society. For generations, our engineers have proven to be entrepreneurial problem-solvers, both in business and in a social context.

At TU Delft we embrace diversity as one of our core values and we actively engage to be a university where you feel at home and can flourish. We value different perspectives and qualities. We believe this makes our work more innovative, the TU Delft community more vibrant and the world more just. Together, we imagine, invent and create solutions using technology to have a positive impact on a global scale. That is why we invite you to apply. Your application will receive fair consideration.

Challenge. Change. Impact!

Faculty Aerospace Engineering
The Faculty of Aerospace Engineering at Delft University of Technology is a leading international community where innovation in aerospace meets global challenges. Our support and scientific staff, including PhD candidates, postdocs, and students, largely work together on three main themes: the energy transition, sustainable aerospace, and safety and security, with the aim of tackling climate change and contributing to the independence and security of Europe.

When you join us, you become part of a diverse, collaborative, and forward-thinking environment where your ideas and perspectives are valued. Our work extends beyond the lab—into field labs, innovation hubs, and partnerships with other faculties, research institutes, governments, and industry, both locally and globally.

We are committed to fostering an inclusive and welcoming workplace, assisted by an active Diversity & Inclusion team. This includes tangible support such as funding for extra personnel for family and caregiving responsibilities, mentoring programmes, and initiatives that promote cultural exchange and integration.

You don’t just join our faculty — you join a community where you can thrive, grow, and help shape the future of aerospace.

Click here to go to the website of the Faculty of Aerospace Engineering.

PhD Position in Deep Learning for Acoustic Sensor Fusion on Intelligent Vehicles

Job description
In this project you will develop novel AI and Deep Learning techniques for traffic detection using vehicle-mounted microphones, enhancing the perception capabilities of Advanced Driver-Assistance Systems (ADAS) and Automated Vehicles (AVs) beyond traditional camera, radar, and lidar sensors. Unlike these sensors, which require direct line-of-sight, acoustic detection captures traffic sounds like tire noise, sirens, and electric vehicle signals, enabling anticipation of unseen traffic in low-visibility scenarios. This additional sensing modality can improve driving safety, for instance by detecting approaching vehicles around corners or behind obstacles, and by localizing salient sounds such as sirens. Your research will explore new use cases of acoustic perception for advanced automated driving systems, and new methods for fusing sound with other sensor data for more robust environment perception through deep learning.

We offer a fully-funded 4-year PhD position at the Intelligent Vehicles Group in the Cognitive Robotics department of TU Delft. The group frequently publishes in top conferences and journals such as CVPR, ECCV, ICRA, IROS, T-IV, T-ITS, T-RO, T-PAMI. Your primary supervisor will be Dr. Julian Kooij. The project is co-funded and co-supervised by the Audio Innovation Center of NXP Semiconductors in Leuven (NASDAQ: NXPI). For your work you will have access to the compute resources of TU Delft, ranging from personal machines, to shared GPU servers, the Delft AI Cluster that is shared across departments, as well as DelftBlue , which is one of the top 250 supercomputers in the world.

At the Intelligent Vehicles Group you'll find an open and friendly environment, with opportunities for professional development and training to successfully develop your academic skills. We have a collaborative culture regarding research, education, and use of lab resources. We interact on a daily basis and share a drive to strengthen the position of the group as a whole thanks to the growth of each member. In addition, you will have regular progress meetings with experts from NXP’s Audio Innovation Centre.

Research challenges
You will improve on state-of-the-art deep learning techniques for multi-sensor environment perception in autonomous driving by integrating acoustics. Possible research directions include the use of audio-visual foundation models, audio-driven sensor fusion for object detection, cross-modal representation learning, and self-supervised learning for this novel perception task. The developed models should provide holistic representations of all surrounding traffic by fusing multi-microphone data with other sensor modalities. Such holistic traffic representations support many driving tasks at once, as required for full self-driving. The addition of acoustics should improve the robustness of the existing sensor suite.

A unique asset is the IV group’s Prius demonstrator vehicle with cameras, lidars, radars, and a roof-mounted microphone array. It provides you unique multi-sensor data to investigate and demonstrate how acoustics can improve vehicle perception tasks, for which you collaborate with another PhD candidate in this project. Together with other researchers in the IV group, you help develop and maintain the software for this shared demonstrator vehicle.

Job requirements

• Completed (or about to complete) a MSc degree related to any of: artificial intelligence, machine learning, intelligent vehicles / robotics, acoustics and signal processing, computer vision.
• Demonstratable experience in applying Deep Learning, using PyTorch, TensorFlow, JAX on real-world sensor data.
• Experience with robotic/vehicle perception tasks with computer vision, lidar or radar. Experience in acoustic perception is a plus.
• Knowledge of the Robot Operating System (ROS), and signal processing, is a plus.
• Good theoretic understanding of the fundamentals of Machine Learning.
• Ability to act independently as well as to collaborate effectively with members of a larger interdisciplinary team, take initiative, be result oriented, organized and creative.
• Excellent programming skills (Python, possibly also C/C++).
• Good command of verbal and written English.

TU Delft (Delft University of Technology)
Delft University of Technology is built on strong foundations. As creators of the world-famous Dutch waterworks and pioneers in biotech, TU Delft is a top international university combining science, engineering and design. It delivers world class results in education, research and innovation to address challenges in the areas of energy, climate, mobility, health and digital society. For generations, our engineers have proven to be entrepreneurial problem-solvers, both in business and in a social context.

At TU Delft we embrace diversity as one of our core values and we actively engage to be a university where you feel at home and can flourish. We value different perspectives and qualities. We believe this makes our work more innovative, the TU Delft community more vibrant and the world more just. Together, we imagine, invent and create solutions using technology to have a positive impact on a global scale. That is why we invite you to apply. Your application will receive fair consideration.

Challenge. Change. Impact!

Faculty Mechanical Engineering
From chip to ship. From machine to human being. From idea to solution. Driven by a deep-rooted desire to understand our environment and discover its underlying mechanisms, research and education at the ME faculty focusses on fundamental understanding, design, production including application and product improvement, materials, processes and (mechanical) systems.

ME is a dynamic and innovative faculty with high-tech lab facilities and international reach. It’s a large faculty but also versatile, so we can often make unique connections by combining different disciplines. This is reflected in ME’s outstanding, state-of-the-art education, which trains students to become responsible and socially engaged engineers and scientists. We translate our knowledge and insights into solutions to societal issues, contributing to a sustainable society and to the development of prosperity and well-being. That is what unites us in pioneering research, inspiring education and (inter)national cooperation.

Click here to go to the website of the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering. Do you want to experience working at our faculty? These videos will introduce you to some of our researchers and their work.