Water systems are vital for all life on earth but are threatened by global change, including population increase, increased water use, pollution and climate change, including their extremes. The Water Systems and Global Change (WSG) chair within the Earth Systems and Global Change group is uniquely able to study the water system in relation to global change and to provide an integrated approach to improve sustainable water security by combining the domains of hydrology, water quality, crop modelling, climate change mitigation and adaptation, and climate services.
We work from local to global scales and with partners inside and outside academia. In our group we develop models to assess water pollution hotspots for multiple pollutants and their sources (e.g., MARINA), associated impacts (e.g., GlowPa) and future trends to identify synergetic solutions. We link them with our hydrological (VIC), crop (Wofost) and other models to increase understanding of water scarcity issues for different sectors, such as irrigation, under climate change and socioeconomic developments.
To strengthen our team, consisting of assistant, associate and full professors, postdocs, PhDs and scientific programming support staff, we have a vacancy for an Assistant or Associate professor in the domain of water quality. In this position you will be expected to develop your research niche around water quality modeling in a global change context, in close collaboration with other staff in the group and beyond.
Focus areas could be, but are not limited to 1) modelling water quality at large scale and coupling the water quality model to our ‘in-house’ hydrological VIC-WUR model or other models in order to answer questions on clean water availability for relevant sectors, 2) modelling impacts of water pollution on sectors, such as human health (microbial pollution), food security (chemical pollution) and/or ecosystem health (e.g., nutrient, chemical and plastics pollution) across spatial and temporal scales, 3) developing future pathways for adaptation / mitigation and/or water quality services building on water quality model results.
Your duties and responsibilities include: - establish your own research team in the water quality subgroup as part of the Earth Systems and Global Change group, with a focus on water quality modeling;
- acquire competitive research funding to develop your own team;
- supervise and coach BSc and MSc students, PhD candidates and postdocs;
- teach and coordinate courses at BSc and MSc levels;
- contribute to the Earth Systems and Global Change group, the University and the scientific community.
This position is part of the
Academic Career Framework at Wageningen University & Research, which has replaced the traditional Tenure Track. This new career framework for all academic staff at Wageningen University started on 9 March 2025. One of the 3 career paths is the Professor Career Path. The aim of this ACF is to achieve a new balance in recognising and valuing academics where both team collaboration and the unique talent of individual scientists are seen, by creating more differentiation in career paths, putting the emphasis on the quality of work and less on quantitative results, doing justice to the individual qualities and ambitions of academics as much as to team performance, promoting all aspects of open science and encouraging high-quality leadership in the academy.