PhD in Artificial Intelligence to support Sustainable Development Goals 6 (clean water) and 7 (clean energy) as part of the Innovation Lab for Utilities on Sustainable Technology and Renewable Energy (ILUSTRE) project, funded in a public private partnership by NWO/NLAIC and private partners.

PhD in Artificial Intelligence for predictive maintenance in water and electricity infrastructure (ILUSTRE)

The Jheronimus Academy of Data Science (JADS) is the joint Data Science Academy of Tilburg University and Eindhoven University of Technology, the Netherlands.

JADS is seeking an enthusiastic colleague for the position of

PhD researcher in Artificial Intelligence for predictive maintenance in water and electricity infrastructure,

as part of the ILUSTRE project that focusses on use-cases in the Caribbean region.

Short Description 
Are you interested in building deep learning solutions to achieve real-time-based predictive maintenance algorithms for real-world applications? In this project, you will be exploring unsupervised and self-supervised learning methods. Moreover, you will have the possibility to test the results of your work with water and energy providers. This position is part of a collaboration between several industrial and academic partners.

Job Description
Predictive maintenance offers great potential value to the energy and water supply industry. Timely detection of required maintenance of machines, sensors, or other critical infrastructure can prevent service disruptions and costly loss of resources. For instance, visual sensors can be used to analyze and detect subtle patterns, and auditory sensors can pick up subtle sound changes. 
Artificial intelligence allows for improved prediction performance on predictive maintenance tasks. However, one of the main challenges is dealing with real-time-based predictive maintenance. Instead of treating predictive maintenance as a simple alert monitoring, real-time-based predictive maintenance offers an estimate of time-to-failure. You will be addressing this challenge by working with large amounts of unlabeled visual and auditory datasets to create models for continuous and reliable monitoring of system states that can accurately predict time-to-failure. You will work on deep learning solutions to achieve real-time-based predictive maintenance algorithms. These models will be based on unsupervised and self-supervised learning, and you will work with both discriminative and generative models. Moreover, you will study the accuracy, reliability, and possible integration of these models with water and energy providers and other industrial partners.
 
Your work will contribute to achieving a more reliable distribution of energy and water and to the more general goal of building robust machine learning for a sustainable society. You will be part of the Jheronimus Academy of Data Science in ‘s-Hertogenbosch and closely collaborate with Tilburg University and the Eindhoven University of Technology. 

ILUSTRE project
This position is linked to ILUSTRE, a new Innovation Center for Artificial Intelligence (ICAI) to be established in Curaçao. ILUSTRE will be a living lab in the Caribbean with the objective to develop, implement and test AI innovations that will accelerate the use of clean energy and advanced solutions in water treatment and wastewater recycling/purification. The innovation lab is one of the new ICAI labs that are part of the ROBUST program on Trustworthy AI-based Systems for Sustainable Growth which is financed under the NWO LTP funding scheme. ILUSTRE offers opportunities for PhD candidates who wish to support to the acceleration of the energy transition and who have an affinity with the Dutch Caribbean islands.

We are looking for candidates that meet the following criteria:

• A master’s degree in artificial intelligence, data science, computer science or an equivalent quantitative field.
• Provable affinity with the Caribbean region.
• Preparedness to perform a significant part of the research in the Caribbean region.
• A research-oriented attitude.
• Ability to work in a team while also taking a pro-active attitude to drive your own research in collaboration with industrial partners and other stakeholders.
• Fluent in spoken and written English (C1 level). 

Being appointed at JADS provides a meaningful job in a dynamic and ambitious community of two universities and many startups. Based on the project, the candidate receives an appointment at Tilburg University.

As a PhD Student at JADS you will have a full-time employment for a total of four years, with an intermediate evaluation after nine months. JADS offers excellent employment conditions with attention to flexibility and (personal) development and attractive fringe benefits. The gross monthly salary is in accordance with the Collective Labor Agreement for Dutch Universities. The minimum gross salary is € 2.770 per month up to a maximum of € 3.539 in the fourth year. The selected candidate will start with a contract for one year. Upon a positive outcome of the first-year evaluation, the candidate will be offered an employment contract for the remaining three years. You are entitled to a vacation allowance of 8% and a year-end bonus of 8.3% of your gross annual income. If you work 40 hours per week, you will receive 41 paid days of leave per year. PhD Students from outside the Netherlands may qualify for a temporary tax-free allowance of their taxable salary if they meet the relevant conditions. The university applies for this allowance on their behalf. JADS will provide assistance in finding suitable accommodation.

The exact conditions of employment may vary depending on the percentage of time spent in Curaçao as part of your secondment. 

Preferred starting date: February 2024 or as soon as possible

To develop your teaching skills, you will spend 10% of your employment on teaching tasks. To support you during your PhD and to prepare you for the rest of your career, you will make a Training and Supervision plan and you will have free access to a personal development program for PhD students.

Next to that we offer all kinds of facilities and arrangements to maintain an optimal balance between work and private life. All employees of the university are covered by the so-called General Pension Fund for Public Employers (Stichting Pensioenfonds ABP).  

JADS values an open and inclusive culture. We embrace diversity and encourage the mutual integration of groups of employees and students. We focus on creating equal opportunities for all our employees and students so that everyone feels at home in our university community. 
All researchers working in JADS have contracts at either Tilburg University or Eindhoven University of Technology. Please visit Working at Tilburg University and Working at Eindhoven University of Technology for more information on their respective employment conditions.

JADS

We do cool stuff that matters, with data. The Jheronimus Academy of Data Science (JADS) is a unique cooperation between Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e) and Tilburg University (TiU). At JADS, we believe that data science can provide answers to society’s complex issues. We provide innovative educational programs, data science research, and support for business and society. With a team of lecturers, students, scientists and entrepreneurs - from a wide range of sectors and disciplines – we work on creating impact with data science. We do this by connecting people, sectors and industries: in the past 5 years we have been working with 300+ organizations on data-related projects. Our main drivers? Doing cool stuff that matters with data. Our location at the former monastery Mariënburg in Den Bosch houses a vibrant campus fully dedicated to data science. 

CHECK OUT THE OTHER PhD vacancies at JADS: Vacancies - JADS - a great place to work.