University of Antwerp has huge a campus in Belgium and widely known as for its contribution in top notch education and research. The contribution of University of Antwerp is not only limited to natural sciences and engineering but it also offers high quality research as well as higher education in bio-medical sciences, social sciences, humanities, psychology, education, architecture etc.

1. Doctoral scholarship holder Lung cancer screening

Summary of Doctoral Project:

With this project, we want to address how computer algorithms for detecting and measuring of lung nodules are performing. The greatest challenge is to develop new test methods in a world with rapidly changing technology – including between others also artificial intelligence. We will mainly focus on the performance of CAD algorithms using low-dose chest CT protocols. The ultimate goal is to find vendor independent targets that ensure small lung nodules can be detected and adequately measured. We will work with anthropomorphic phantoms, mimicking the patient’s chest. In these phantoms, 3D printed simulated lung lesions can be inserted. What is the behavior of different available CAD algorithms? How do they react to radiation dose reduction and more noise in the images? In a next phase, a database consisting of clinical chest CT images will be established and used for further testing of existing CAD algorithms.

Last Application Date: 25 September 2022

View Details & Apply

2. Research assistant Bioinformatics of Next-generation sequencing data of Mycobacterium tuberculosis

Summary of Doctoral Project:

The Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences (University of Antwerp) has the following vacancy: a full-time (100%) research assistant in the Department of Family and Population Health in the area of bioinformatics of Next-generation sequencing data of Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Project Title: Advancing bioinformatic methods for Next-generation sequencing analysis of Mycobacterium tuberculosis You will work under the supervision of Prof. Annelies Van Rie in the TORCH (Tuberculosis Omics ResearCH) consortium (https://torch-consortium.com) at the University of Antwerp in Belgium.

Last Application Date: 15 September 2022

View Details & Apply

Looking For More Fully Funded PhD Programs? Click Here

3. Doctoral scholarship holder Novel surgical approaches for lung cancer

Summary of Doctoral Project:

You will work actively on the preparation and defence of a PhD thesis in the field of novel surgical approaches for lung cancer. Non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) is the leading cause of cancer death worldwide. Patients with advanced lung cancer are treated with chemotherapy and/or immunotherapy. We and others have demonstrated that isolated lung perfusion (ILuP) is a technique that is able to deliver high doses of chemotherapy specifically to the lung by using a closed lung bypass circuit but with minimal systemic exposure. This was also confirmed in phase I and phase II clinical trials by our group in which surgical resection was combined with ILuP. With this new project which is sponsored by ‘Kom op tegen kanker’, we want to further improve this technology as a repetitive endovascular technique in preparation for new human clinical trials. To this end, a series of porcine, and humane ex-vivo experiments will be performed to assess the optimal dose and conditions to selectively administer chemotherapy to the lung alone. A cutting-edge surgical model will therefore be optimized and combined with molecular and imaging tools such as CT, microCT, histopathology, RT-PCR and mass spectrometry.

Last Application Date: 31 August 2022

View Details & Apply

4. Doctoral scholarship holder neuromodulation by electroconvulsive therapy in clinical psychiatry

Summary of Doctoral Project:

Project title: “Changing Tactics? Optimizing ECT in difficult-to-treat depression”). Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) remains the most efficient clinical intervention for difficult to treat, severe and sometimes life-threatening depressive episodes. This project aims to unravel whether switching from unilateral to bilateral electrode placement after four treatment sessions improves depressive symptomatology in treatment non-responders. Your role as clinical doctoral student will entail i) conducting the study in cooperation with the clinical ECT and scientific research teams, ii) managing the project as study coordinator, iii) analyzing and disseminating the data via 3 to 4 scientific manuscripts in A1 peer-reviewed journals and 4) Writing and defending your PhD thesis.

Last Application Date: September 8th, 2022

View Details & Apply

5. Doctoral scholarship holder immunopsychiatry

Summary of Doctoral Project:

You will work actively on the preparation and defence of a PhD thesis in the field of immunopsychiatry. The research will focus on the role of inflammatory processes in mood and psychotic disorders through a multidisciplinary approach of quantifying inflammatory markers in biobanked patient samples, effectuating an investigational clinical trial with anti-inflammatory add-on compounds and performing statistical analyses on an existing large database of inflammatory markers and psychiatric symptoms. You will mainly operate from SINAPS (Scientific Initiative for Neuropsychiatric and Psychopharmacologic Studies), a collaboration between the Collaborative Antwerp Psychiatric Research Institute (CAPRI) of the University of Antwerp and the University Psychiatric Centre Duffel and as such be located at the psychiatric hospital in Duffel.

Last Application Date: September 8th, 2022

View Details & Apply

How to Write Cover Letter for PhD Program?

6. Doctoral scholarship holder Behavioural Design

Summary of Doctoral Project:

You will work actively on the preparation and defence of a PhD thesis in the field of Design for interaction and Behavioural design. You actively participate in the research project “Behavioural design: Mapping out challenges and opportunities.“ Behavioural design is increasingly recognised as a key method and strategy for enabling social change. However, as a sub-discipline of design, it is facing a number of key issues, including a lack of understanding of how it is actually used, and how effective it is. The suggested project seeks to address this by (1) engaging directly with key stakeholders in both the private and public sectors to explore how behavioural design is currently applied and understood. (2) conducting a systematic mapping review of relevant work in the public and private sector. You will contribute to the research project through conducting a literature review and engaging with key stakeholders through interviews and workshops.

Last Application Date: August 16, 2022

View Details & Apply

7. Doctoral candidate in the interdisciplinary field of Applied Sciences and Heritage science, focussing on the cleaning of heritage objects by non-thermal plasma-generated atomic oxygen

Summary of Doctoral Project:

You will work actively on the preparation and defence of a PhD thesis dedicated to the development and study of a new green, contactless cleaning technology for the active treatment of heritage objects, based on non-thermal plasma-generated atomic oxygen. More in particular, your work will focus on studying the effect of atomic oxygen on the surface of heritage materials. You will characterize both the efficiency of the removal of different organic contaminants on the surface, and the potential unsolicited chemical reactions in the substrate material. This position is part of a FWO funded senior research project for fundamental research, a collaboration between Ghent University, KIK-IRPA and UAntwerpen. This implies that the candidate will have to interact in an interdisciplinary way with, and travel between these institutes. The candidate is expected to interact with an associated consortium of European research institutes and museums as well, and clearly communicate its findings to plasma scientists, chemists, and various cultural heritage experts (e.g. museum staff, conservators-restorers, etc.)

Last Application Date: 16 August 2022

View Details & Apply

8. Doctoral scholarship holder Environmental economics and sustainability assessment

Summary of Doctoral Project:

You will work actively on the preparation and defence of a PhD thesis Applied Economics. The transition towards a sustainable economy is dependent on consistent and comparable environmental assessments of bio-based products. However, in practice today the methods to assess the impact of bio-based products give incomparable results, thus confusing decision-making. The Horizon Europe project ALIGNED (Aligning life cycle assessment (LCA) methods and bio-based sectors for improved environmental performance) will deliver a modelling framework to assess and optimise the environmental and socio-economic performance of bio-based industries. This PhD research will contribute to the modelling framework, work specifically on the case of the woodworking sector and on both socio-economic assessments and LCA.

Last Application Date: 8 September 2022

View Details & Apply

9. Doctoral scholarship holder Energy and environmental economics

Summary of Doctoral Project:

You will work actively on the preparation and defence of a PhD thesis Applied Economics. The increasing level of renewable energy and associated challenges for the energy system lead to the expectation that flexibility services (such as smart charging of electric vehicles) at low voltage will increase in the coming years. This evolution is driven by the shift from passive to active grid users that may provide flexibility both individually and collectively and hence support the security of supply and grid stability. Against this backdrop, a research project was awarded by the Energy Transition Fund. The chosen candidate will primarily be responsible for developing, conducting and reporting on research on flexibility services provided by individuals or energy communities using discrete choice experiments.

Last Application Date: 1 September 2022

View Details & Apply

10. Doctoral scholarship holder in the field of Interpreting Studies

Summary of Doctoral Project:

You will work actively on the one-year research project “Multimodal input & cognition: An experimental study into the effect of written text in Simultaneous Interpreting” (“Multimodale input & cognitie: Een experimentele studie naar het effect van tekst bij het simultaantolken”) under the supervision of prof. dr. Isabelle Robert and dr. Esther de Boe.

Last Application Date: August 30th, 2022

View Details & Apply

How to Write Motivation Letter for PhD Program?

11. Doctoral scholarship holder Sociolinguistics / (variational) pragmatics

Summary of Doctoral Project:

You will work actively on the preparation and defence of a PhD thesis in the field of sociolinguistics / (variational) pragmatics. The research project aims to examine to which extent national and subnational cultures of speakers play a role in the way they interact linguistically in commercial and non-commercial public settings in Flanders, Wallonia, the Netherlands and France. You will publish scientific articles related to the research project. You will carry out a limited number of teaching and research support tasks for the Master of Multilingual Professional Communication, more specifically for the course ‘Communication professionnelle’ (‘Professional communication’).

Last Application Date: August, 17 2022

View Details & Apply

12. Doctoral scholarship holder, Near-sensor neural networks

Summary of Doctoral Project:

You will work actively on the preparation and defence of a PhD thesis on neural networks with on-device adaptation and learning capabilities, using lightweight online learning frameworks. Your research methodologies will include analysing, designing, and applying novel machine learning algorithms. You will consider the accuracy, performance, and hardware resource footprint of your algorithms to optimize them for ultra-low power devices. You will validate your research through both experimental benchmarking of your algorithms in simulations, on real HW (micro-controllers or specific HW accelerators) as well as on concrete industrial use cases. You will tightly collaborate with IDLab colleagues working on various aspects of resource-efficient and ultra-low power AI.

Last Application Date: 18 August 2022

View Details & Apply

13. Doctoral scholarship holder, Electrochemical engineering

Summary of Doctoral Project:

You will work actively on the preparation and defence of a PhD thesis in the field of electrochemical engineering. Electrochemistry is gaining more and more attention as a potential alternative to several traditional industrial processes because of its positive impact on global greenhouse gas emissions (mainly CO2), its ability to store periodic renewable energy and the production of alternative energy sources such as H2. You compete for externally funded research grants. You will publish scientific articles and/or patents related to the research project. As a PhD student of ELCAT you also support a part of the general research and teaching tasks to support the good day-to-day functioning of the research group and the Faculty of Applied Engineering.

Last Application Date: Open until filled

View Details & Apply

14. PhD position in Science in the field of photo-electrochemical nucleic acid based sensors

Summary of Doctoral Project:

A-Sense Lab at the University of Antwerp has an open position for a PhD to strengthen our developments in the field of photo-electrochemical nucleic acid based sensors. The overall goal of this PhD is the development of novel photo-electrochemical biosensors that will pave the way to the construction of affordable, robust, user-friendly and portable platforms for healthcare applications. Due to the integration of recognition bioelements (e.g. DNA/RNA, antibodies or aptamers), electrochemical biosensors are ideally suited for the selective determination of a wide variety of clinically relevant targets such as biomarkers, pathogens, etc. The detection of the analyte of interest will be achieved by taking advantage of the cost-effectiveness and sensitive detection provided by photo-electrochemical strategies. This PhD will contribute to the efforts of getting insight into a yet unexplored biosensing strategy.

Last Application Date: 14 September 2022

View Details & Apply

Motivation Letter vs Cover Letter I All You Need To Know

15. Doctoral scholarship holder Chemistry

Summary of Doctoral Project:

You hold a Master degree in Chemistry, Bio-engineering or Sciences, Applied sciences (engineering) or civil engineering, each time with specialization in chemistry. Candidates that obtain their master degree before the start of the scholarship can also apply. You can demonstrate excellent study results.

Last Application Date: 29 September 2022

View Details & Apply

16. Researcher in the field of quantifying and modelling marine and estuarine ecosystem services

Summary of Doctoral Project:

ECOSPHERE is a research group of the Department of Biology at the University of Antwerp. ECOSPHERE’s research concentrates on the ecology of aquatic ecosystems and wetlands and the processes in the land-water interaction along the whole river continuum and the river-coastal sea interaction. The concept of ecosystem services has gained attention since the publications of Costanza et al. (1997) in Nature and the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment in 2005. The concept received increasing attention ever since, both from science and policy. The strong integrative and multidisciplinary character allows to make the link between ecology, economy and society, creating opportunities for better underpinned nature and environmental policy. Major advances have been made for the quantification and modelling of terrestrial ecosystem services but for the marine and estuarine environment research on ecosystem services is still in its infancy. ECOSPHERE is looking for a researcher to develop methods to quantify and model the impact of human activities on marine and estuarine ecosystem functioning and the thereof dependent human well-being (ecosystem services).

Last Application Date: 17 August 2022

View Details & Apply

17. Doctoral researchers Molecular Plant Physiology

Summary of Doctoral Project:

You will work actively on the preparation and defence of a PhD thesis on the functional analysis of drought tolerance promoting endophytes in the growth zone of maize leaves. The project aims to study the effects of endophytic fungi and bacteria on maize leaf growth under optimal and drought conditions. Endophytic bacteria and fungi isolated from the leaf growth zone of grasses growing in arid conditions will be functionally characterised using a multidisciplinary approach. This will involve testing of isolates for their effect on leaf growth under optimal and drought conditions, sequencing the genome of growth promoting isolates, kinematic analysis of cell division and expansion in the leaf growth zone, flowcytometry, NGS sequencing (plant and endophytic mRNA), metabolome analysis and quantification of endophyte numbers under control and drought conditions.

Last Application Date: 31 August 2022

View Details & Apply

How to Write a Follow-Up Email? Mistakes To Avoid

18. Doctoral scholarship holder Behavioural, Urban and Disease Ecology

Summary of Doctoral Project:

The Department of Biology in the Faculty of Sciences is looking for a full-time (100%) doctoral student in the field of Behavioural, Urban and Disease Ecology. Urban landscapes provide substantial challenges for wildlife. They not only expose animals to a highly dynamic, novel environment, but they may also alter the pace of social life, which then again sets the conditions for the spread of socially transmitted diseases. Yet little is known about how disease transmission is actually affected by the (heterogeneity of) the urban landscape and how that is driven by individual variation in the (behavioural) capacities that animals require to survive in urban environments.

Last Application Date: 18 August 2022

View Details & Apply

19. Doctoral scholarship holder Computational Neurobiology

Summary of Doctoral Project:

We are the Computational Neurobiology lab and address fundamental questions in chromatin organization, epigenetics and brain biology. We develop machine learning approaches for large-scale data integration and reconstruct cis-regulatory networks to understand how a cell “chooses” its fate. In particular, we focus on the role of chromatin organization in neuronal cell fate specification and neurodegenerative disease, aiming to bring results of fundamental research to the clinic. The proposed PhD project aims to understand how a cell makes a choice between gene isoforms with alternative transcription start sites, and in particular, what is the role of chromatin organisation in this process. The selected candidate will work in the context of the human neuro-immune system and will use cutting-edge experimental and computational techniques to reveal the cis-regulatory networks underlying this complex process.

Last Application Date: Until filled

View Details & Apply

How To Apply For PhD Programs? All You Need To Know