PhD Identifying and scaling the effective elements in HPAI prevention policies and interventions

Are you interested in one health and the role of human behaviour in disease transmission? Do you want to be part of a highly interdisciplinary research project aimed at making the Indonesian health care system more resilient against Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI) and work together with its stakeholders (public authorities health care and wildlife workers, farmers and community members)? This PhD position might be what you are looking for!

The Business Economics Group and Health and Society Group, in collaboration with the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine of Utrecht University and Indonesian Universities, are looking for a PhD researcher to work in the NOW-Merian funded project “A whole-of-society approach to health syste resiliency and pandemic preparedness in Indonesia”. Working in this project, you will as PhD researcher conduct research on developing an agent-based model simulating the HPAI intervention and involving relevant actors in the poultry value chain. Research will consist of collecting relevant information from literature and stakeholders, building an HPAI transmission model and building the agent-based simulation model.

You work with a consortium of researchers in the Netherlands and Indonesia and intermittent travel to Indonesia is expected. Throughout the project, feedback from stakeholders like poultry farmers, citizens, governmental officials and public health workers provide guidance about how to develop the models.

The research is embedded within the Business Economics Group with Prof. Henk Hogeveen as promotor. You will be co-supervised by dr. Kristina Thompson (Health and Society Group) and Prof. Arjan Stegeman (Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, Utrecht University).

PhD Position - One health cross-policy and system assessment for the governance of Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI) prevention in Indonesia

PhD ‘Governance of zoonoses for community resilience from a One Health perspective: integrating and translating knowledge into enabling policies using a multisectoral and transdisciplinary network platform’

Your Job
Are you interested in one health and the governance of sustainable infectious disease prevention? Do you want to be part of a highly interdisciplinary research project aimed at making the Indonesian health care system more resilient against Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI) and work closely together with its stakeholders (public authorities health care and wildlife workers, farmers and community members)? This PhD position might be what you are looking for!

The Health and Society Group, in collaboration with Indonesian Universities, are looking for a PhD researcher to work in the NWO-Merian funded project “A whole-of-society approach to health system resiliency and pandemic preparedness in Indonesia”. Working in this project, you will as PhD researcher perform a systematic assessment of policy risks and resources for zoonoses in relevant policy and regulatory documents; apply the One Health-SMART approach for systems mapping and analysis, collecting relevant information from scientific literature and interviewing stakeholders; and conduct a cross-region survey on implementation conditions for One Health. Throughout the project, feedback from stakeholders like poultry farmers, citizens, governmental officials and public health workers provide guidance about how to develop the models.

You will work with the other four work package teams both in the Netherlands and Indonesia (IPB and Universitas Indonesia) to coordinate data collection and participatory stakeholder meetings. Intermittent travel to Indonesia for data collection and knowledge exchange is expected.

The research in work package 1 is embedded within the Health and Society Group with Prof. Spencer Moore as promotor. You will be co-supervised by dr. Marleen Bekker, Associate Professor, and dr. Denny Lukman, Associate Professor at IPB University, Bogor.

PhD Candidate in Ecosystem Response to Tundra Fires at the Plant Ecology and Nature Conservation Group

Are you enthusiastic about understanding climate feedback processes in tundra ecosystems? Are you enthusiastic to conduct field- and remote sensing-based monitoring for impactful science? We are looking for a pro-active, analytical and self-motivated PhD candidate to contribute to our understanding of fire impacts on vegetation and carbon emissions in a rapidly warming Arctic. You will work on satellite image analysis and field inventories of ecosystem responses to tundra fires in remote Arctic sites. You will work at the Plant Ecology and Nature Conservation group (PEN) and collaborate with researchers in the Meteorology & Air Quality Group and colleagues at various other institutes. Your project will be embedded in the EMBRACER consortium.

About EMBRACER
At EMBRACER we work at the very frontiers of knowledge on climate change, Earth’s climate system and climate feedbacks. Within its 10-year research programme, funded by NWO, EMBRACER brings together a wide range of world-leading climate experts with the aim to address existing uncertainties about climate feedbacks at the boundaries between oceans, land, ice, and atmosphere. Our interdisciplinary approach and state-of-the-art infrastructure will bring us forward in our understanding of the impact of climate feedbacks emerging over the next decades to centuries.

Your tasks will consist of:

• Analysis of satellite images and climate data to study occurrence of tundra fires and subsequent regreening across climatic gradients;
• Remote fieldwork in fire-affected and pristine tundra in the Sisimiut – Kangerlussuaq region, in an interdisciplinary team;
• Vegetation surveys, soil physical monitoring and carbon flux observations;
• State-of-the art analysis of spatio-temporal and ecological data;
• Collaboration with researchers and (BSc/MSc) students from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds;

This is a fixed-term position of 18 months (1.0 fte), which will be extended to 48 months if you perform well.

Technical Building Manager

Do you like to ensure that education and research buildings are in top condition, with sustainable and reliable installations? With us, you get the responsibility and the freedom to arrange this. A challenging position in which no day is the same, with plenty of opportunities to develop yourself further.

You will find yourself in a collegial working environment where a good atmosphere is self-evident. In addition to a healthy work-life balance, we offer you a fixed end-of-year bonus of 8.3%. Watch an impression via this short clip

Your job
As a Technical Building Manager, you will work on location for one or more research and education buildings on and around the campus in Wageningen. You are the point of contact for daily technical management and arrange user maintenance and small-scale projects. In doing so, you will work closely with the internal technical department, maintenance parties and specialists from Building & Housing Management (BHM). On location, you coordinate with the location manager and lab administrators.
Jouw belangrijkste taken:

• Organiseren en coördineren van dagelijks onderhoud en kleinschalige aanpassingen;
• Aansturen van onderhoudspartijen en interne technische dienst;
• Analyseren en oplossen van storingen aan gebouwinstallaties;
• Bewaken van keuringen en opvolging van storingen;
• Beheren en actualiseren van de meerjarenonderhoudsplanning (MJOP);
• Adviseren over casco-onderhoud en afstemmen met projectmanagers bij grotere projecten.

Your team
You will be working in the Building & Housing Management team (approximately 20 colleagues), part of the Facilities Department of Wageningen University & Research. We manage and develop a unique and sustainable real estate portfolio, with many technical challenges. Think of complex installations for laboratories, energy storage, heat pumps and smart control technology. We are working on big ambitions, such as a completely gas-free campus within two years. We are the most sustainable university in the world.

The atmosphere in the team is informal and collegial. You will work together with specialists from various fields: electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, measurement and control technology and construction. We regularly organize fun activities and drinks. On campus, you will work in modern buildings with nice workplaces, good coffee and green work cafes to discuss or relax.

Postdoc position - Advancing in-situ data collection for land cover change using immersive technologies

Are you curious about how immersive technologies like virtual reality can revolutionize environmental research? Do you want to transform how we interpret and collect in-situ data to improve map-making for climate action and conservation efforts? Are you excited to bridge the gap between cutting-edge technologies, user experience, and real-world geospatial challenges?

Accurate and timely land cover information underpins essential decision-making in areas such as urban planning, biodiversity conservation, agriculture, and climate change mitigation. While satellite-based remote sensing provides large-scale and consistent observations, in-situ data collection remains a vital component for ground-truthing, model calibration, and validation of automated monitoring. However, conventional methods for in-situ data collection—typically involving manual interpretation of high-resolution satellite imagery via 2D web-based interfaces—can be time-consuming and prone to interpretation variability and error.

Immersive technologies such as virtual reality (VR) are emerging as powerful tools to transform the exploration of complex geospatial data. As a human-centered medium, they enable 360-degree panoramic vision and embodied, intuitive interaction, situating users in context-rich environments that mimic real-world experiences. These features make immersive technologies well-suited for tasks such as comparing spatial locations across time, highlighting changes in various dataset components, and integrating ancillary information layers within a fully three-dimensional (3D-in-3D) workspace.

The postdoctoral researcher will lead this interdisciplinary venture of advancing in-situ data collection for land cover change monitoring using immersive technologies. The research will focus on three primary objectives:

1. Assess and understand the sources of interpretation variability in conventional online in-situ data collection platforms using automated (eye) tracking techniques.
2. Develop a VR workbench that leverages unique and transferable features of immersive technologies to transform the presentation of time series plots, image layers, and tabular data, thereby improving in situ data collection.
3. Evaluate design principles and solutions from the immersive workbench to enhance web-based annotation platforms, offering scalable solutions.

You will work with Dr. Nandika Tsendbazar and Dr. Jiayan Zhao at the Laboratory of Geo-information Science and Remote Sensing, Wageningen University. Dr. Jiayan Zhao brings expertise in interface design, data visualization, and user experience evaluation in virtual environments. Dr. Nandika Tsendbazar brings expertise in in-situ data collection via visual interpretation in the domain of land and forest cover change monitoring. The postdoc will act as a bridge between these domains, developing novel solutions grounded in both user-centered design and the domain-specific annotation challenges of in-situ data. The project will contribute to our ongoing initiatives to advance uncertainty analysis of Earth Observation data products, supporting their informative uses for various applications through next-generation geospatial tools.