Research Assistant in Crop and Variety Research

As a research assistant, you contribute to crop and variety improvement in Dutch arable farming and livestock production. With your practical knowledge and experience, you support research, working within a team but frequently going out independently. In this way, you contribute to the sustainability of arable farming and roughage production.

As a research assistant, you play a practical role in the field of crop and variety research (mainly silage corn, grain corn, and grass). You are responsible for preparing and carrying out a wide range of research activities, from finding suitable plots to planting, maintenance, and making observations until harvest. You frequently interact with field trial hosts and are familiar with the farmers' language.

Your tasks and responsibilities:

• Preparing and conducting research activities;
• Maintaining contacts with farmers and field trial hosts;
• Directing those involved in supporting the work;
• Entering collected data into automated files;
• Noticing any deviations in cultivation conditions.

You will work with a small team of 4-8 researchers active in crop and variety research. Additionally, you will be part of a pool of research assistants deployed in a wide range of research projects within the business unit. You will have considerable freedom and independence in performing tasks, and you are responsible for keeping the test fields tidy and ensuring that all tasks are carried out on time. Many of the corn and grass test fields are on farms at approximately 20 locations throughout the Netherlands. You will drive yourself to the various locations in your company car. During the season (from late April to late October), days are often longer, and you can compensate for this extra time by working slightly shorter days from November to March.

Senior researcher greenhouse Crop Management and Cultivation

As senior researcher greenhouse crop management and cultivation, you play a leading role in research into integral sustainable greenhouse cultivation of vegetables and ornamental crops. Your research will focus on maximizing plant potential, drawing on knowledge of plant physiology and employing innovative technologies.

From a solid plant physiological basis you will work on the innovation and improvement of the cultivation of plants in greenhouses. You will work integratively on all aspects of cultivation, from the technical setup to climate- and crop management strategies. Important topics are e.g. the response of crops to the greenhouse climate, energy-efficient lighting systems and dehumidification. Additionally, the research focuses on a data-driven approach, exploring the role of digitization in crop cultivation and management, enhancing the resilience of cultivation systems by design. You will also contribute to the cultivation of new crops and development of new cultivation systems.

Your duties and responsibilities as senior researcher include:

• Acquiring multidisciplinary projects, including B2B- and Public-Private Partnership projects;
• Maintaining contacts with companies and organizations in the sector and the government;
• Involving stakeholders in research projects;
• Leading (multidisciplinary) projects and supervising (junior) researchers;
• Presenting research results to clients and target groups; both through trade journals and presentations for the sector and through scientific articles and presentations at academic conferences;
• Acting externally as an expert on behalf of the organization, both nationally and internationally.

Your team
You will work within the team Crop Management & Cultivation, one of the 6 research teams of the Business Unit (BU) Greenhouse Horticulture in Bleiswijk. The team consists of 18 people, who collectively work on the optimisation or development of crop production systems in greenhouse horticulture and flower bulbs.

Business Developer Biotech Booster

Biotech Booster is a national growth fund program dedicated to advancing and commercializing biotech innovations. It offers mentorship, financial and business development support, and networking opportunities to help inventors with entrepreneurial ambitions move from the idea stage to developing investable proposals or turning innovative concepts into practical applications in collaboration with industry partners.

As a Business Developer Biotech Booster working in the Thematic Cluster for industrial biotech, you will be responsible for supporting projects with your business development skills. On top of that you will be identifying, developing, and exploring opportunities to commercialize industrial biotechnology innovations with societal impact. You will work closely with researchers, companies, and other stakeholders to ensure that groundbreaking biotechnological discoveries are transformed into valuable products or services.

Your key responsibilities include:

• Identifying industrial biotech innovations within WUR and The Netherlands as well as assessing the market potential and feasibility of these ideas;
• Developing strategies to transform biotechnological innovations into commercial products or applications;
• Assisting with grant applications to advance innovations, overseeing the entire process to generate meaningful impact.
• Collaborating with multidisciplinary teams to streamline and accelerate valorisation processes;
• Building connections with investors, companies, and other stakeholders to promote funding and partnerships.
• Monitoring and reporting on the progress and deliverables of the granted projects.

Biotech Booster is a newly launched programme and is continually evolving, so this role requires flexibility and adaptability. You’ll enjoy being at the forefront of a national initiative and contributing to its development.

Assistant / Associate Professor: Fish health and immunology

The Aquaculture and Fisheries group (AFI) at Wageningen University & Research is looking for a new staff member to help prevent disease, and maintain animal health in aquaculture. If you are an immunologist specialized in aquatic animals and you take sustainable aquaculture serious, then you are the one we would like to talk to.

We are convinced that it is vital to safeguard health of farmed aquatic organisms, contributing to a One Health approach and a sustainable way forward for aquaculture. We aim to do so by prevention, building on both innate and adaptive immune responses. As read-outs we measure systemic as well as mucosal health and local immune responses, to help the development of functional feeds, or vaccines.
As assistant or associate professor in Fish Health and Immunology you are expected to build your own research group in collaboration with your colleagues.

Your duties and responsibilities include:

• Developing a scientifically-challenging and financially-sound research line in fish health with strong foundations in both, molecular and cellular immunology;
• Guiding the groups’ technicians with advanced molecular, cellular and/or (immuno) histochemical expertise;
• Coordinating and teaching the subject of fish health and immunology at BSc, MSc and PhD level;
• Sharing the responsibility for managing the (chair) group of Aquaculture and Fisheries;
• Actively sharing the ambition of W-ARE, WUR’s initiative to work on sustainable aquaculture.

You will work here
The research is embedded within the chair Aquaculture and Fisheries, which is led by Prof. Geert Wiegertjes.

In this challenging career trajectory:

• you acquire, lead and implement innovative and creative (inter-) national research projects in aquaculture;
• you collaborate with colleagues and supervise PhD students, BSc and MSc theses and you develop and teach courses;
• you contribute to the further development of the Aquaculture and Fisheries group.

Tenure Track is a career path for scientists who pursue to excel in education and research. We seek to attract scientific talent and to stimulate and support their development.

PhD position - Towards more resilient electricity grids using network and digital twin approaches

We are looking for an enthusiastic PhD researcher to conduct cutting-edge research at the interface of resilience and the electricity grid, combining socioeconomic, spatial and technical perspectives.

Energy systems are becoming more decentralized while there is increasing demand for electricity, creating growing vulnerabilities such as grid congestion and cybersecurity risks. It is therefore urgent to ensure a more resilient electricity grid.

To tackle this challenge, at technical level, there is need to design resilient operation strategies with fluctuating renewable generation, and to learn how to make system-level detection and prediction of malfunctions or cyber-attacks in power networks. From a socioeconomic and spatial perspective, there is need to create resilient market design and economic incentives, such as considering dynamic pricing, energy sharing and trading, stakeholders’ distribution of costs and benefits, and spatial differences.

In this project, a resilience assessment framework for electricity grids will first be developed, building on resilience theory and interdisciplinary methods in ecology and economics (e.g., the five Ws). Since energy systems can be modeled as networked systems, we will employ spatial and network analysis; where nodes represent components like substations and consumers, edges represent connections between them such as transmission lines, and network metrics can be used to identify critical components in the systems. Network failure or simulated attacks on nodes/edges could allow to prevent disruptions and identify potential vulnerabilities. A digital-twin approach will be employed to simulate various scenarios, including for example, peak load, component failures, attacks, and renewable energy fluctuations. The approach will empower optimal design for greater resilience of the energy system by improving our understanding and evaluating the vulnerability and the effectiveness of different strategies.

In your position as a PhD researcher, you will:

• Critically review existing resilience–electricity grid literature and develop a comprehensive resilience assessment framework for the electricity grid;
• Develop network models and conduct spatial and network analysis to assess the resilience of the system (electricity grid(s));
• Use a digital-twin approach to simulate various scenarios such as cyber-attacks and renewable energy fluctuations;
• Analyze different strategies for facilitating a more resilient grid, such as local energy and flexibility market design.

You will work here
The research is embedded within the chair groups Urban Economics and Biometric, which are led by Prof. Eveline van Leeuwen and Prof. Peter van Heijster. You will be co-supervised by Dr. Sol Maria Halleck Vega and Dr. Xiaodong Cheng.