We are looking for two PhD candidates for the NGF AiNed Fellowship project ‘CHAMP: Child Health through Artificial intelligence Models and Predictions’.

Your job
The CHAMP project, awarded with a NGF AiNed Fellowship grant to Dr Sonja de Zwarte, aims to develop and apply deep learning techniques to extract valuable information on early brain and social-emotional development from already acquired images and videos within The YOUth Cohort to predict mental health outcome in children. You will join our CHAMP team which already consists of three talented PhD candidates who all started last year and each works on their interdisciplinary projects within CHAMP project.

You will become skilled in developing hypotheses and analysing large scale datasets, publishing in peer-reviewed scientific journals, and presenting your work at conferences. In addition, the CHAMP project offers opportunities to develop yourself in terms of interdisciplinary research, societal impact, outreach, and open science.

Your work will also include a 10% teaching task, such as the supervision of Bachelor’s and Master’s theses. Of course, you will be guided and supported by your supervisors and colleagues.

The two positions each have their own focus, but you will work closely together in an interdisciplinary team of AI specialists, computer scientists, psychologists, neuroscientists and environmental epidemiologists on the CHAMP project, all supervised by Dr Sonja de Zwarte.

PhD1
Early diagnosis of early mental health problems is essential for outcome later in life. However, how can we follow children early life (in a non-invasive and cost-effective way!) to monitor their development? In this project, you will amongst others be actively involved in the development and a pilot study of semi-structured online video interviews for 3 and 6 year-old typical developing children. In addition, you will co-develop tools to automatically extract valuable features such as facial expression and early language skills from these interviews. Ultimately, you will aim to link the features extracted from the interviews to outcome measures that are already collected in these children to follow individual development of young children over time. In this particular project, we are looking for someone who speaks Dutch fluently, is excited to work with young children, who is not afraid to get familiar with the latest AI advances for automated data analyses. Professor Jaap Denissen (Developmental Psychology, Utrecht University) will be the promotor of the PhD trajectory.

PhD2
In the CHAMP project we work with large and complex data sets of measures of early brain development, environmental exposures and facial expressions containing a lot of information beyond what meets the eye. You will support designing and validating a fully automated prediction model for mental health outcome in childrenwith the aims of integration of the existing multimodal data and full prediction as an end-to-end procedure without any user input. You will become part of an existing collaboration between Utrecht University, Image Sciences Institute (ISI) at the University Medicial Center Utrecht and the Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e). Prof. Hilleke Hulshoff Pol (Experimental Psychology, Utrecht University), Dr. Ruud van Sloun (Electrical Engineering, TU/e), and Dr Chantal Tax (ISI, UMC Utrecht) will be the (co)promotors of the PhD trajectory. You will have regular interaction with the Signal Processing Systems group at the Electrical Engineering department at the Eindhoven University of Technology and Image Sciences Institute at the University Medical Centre Utrecht.

We are looking for enthusiastic and collaborative team members who meet the following requirements:

• a (research) Master’s degree in the field of artificial intelligence, computer science, mathematics, statistics, psychology, neuroscience, epidemiology or equivalent programme;
• a strong interest and motivation to conduct interdisciplinary research at the intersection of childhood development and artificial intelligence;
• strong affinity for and experience with programming (e.g., Python, PyTorch, TensorFlow, R, Matlab);
• ideally background knowledge of (developmental) psychology in terms of commonly used theories and methods, and the ability to create linkage between new methods and theoretical questions;
• knowledge of and affinity with quantitative research and statistics and a high motivation to learn new methods;
• good communication skills and affinity with working in a multidisciplinary research team while maintaining autonomy;
• strong proactive, collaborative, and creative working approach;
• high proficiency in written and spoken English and for PhD 1 also Dutch;
• interest and motivation to contribute to the teaching activities of the faculty.

We offer:

• a position for one year, with an extension to a total of four years upon successful assessment;
• a working week of 36-40 hours and a gross monthly salary between €2,901 and €3,707 in the case of full-time employment (salary scale P under the Collective Labour Agreement for Dutch Universities (CAO NU));
• 8% holiday pay and 8.3% year-end bonus;
• a pension scheme, partially paid parental leave and flexible terms of employment based on the CAO NU.

In addition to the terms of employment laid down in the CAO NU, Utrecht University has a number of schemes and facilities of its own for employees. This includes schemes facilitating professional development, leave schemes and schemes for sports and cultural activities, as well as discounts on software and other IT products. We also offer access to additional employee benefits through our Terms of Employment Options Model. In this way, we encourage our employees to continue to invest in their growth. For more information, please visit Working at Utrecht University.

Universiteit Utrecht

A better future for everyone. This ambition motivates our scientists in executing their leading research and inspiring teaching. At Utrecht University, the various disciplines collaborate intensively towards major strategic themes. Our focus is on Dynamics of Youth, Institutions for Open Societies, Life Sciences and Pathways to Sustainability. Sharing science, shaping tomorrow.

The Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences is one of the leading faculties in Europe providing research and academic teaching in cultural anthropology, educational sciences, interdisciplinary social science, pedagogical sciences, psychology, and sociology. Almost 7,000 students are enrolled in a broad range of undergraduate and graduate programmes. The Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences has some 1,100 faculty and staff members, all providing their individual contribution to the training and education of young talent and to the research into and finding solutions for scientific and societal issues. The faculty is located at Utrecht Science Park near the historical city centre of Utrecht.

For additional information, please contact Dr Sonja de Zwarte at s.m.c.dezwarte@uu.nl.

Candidates for this vacancy will be recruited by Utrecht University.