06 Postdoctoral Fellowship at Vrije University Amsterdam, Netherlands

The oral cavity is the main gate to the rest of the body and comprises a complex ecosystem with a wealth of microbes (bacteria, fungi, archaea, viruses and protozoa), which normally are in symbiosis with their host. Environmental factors (e.g. diet high in carbohydrates or poor oral hygiene) drive the emergence of dysbiotic microbial communities, which can contribute to development of oral and even systemic diseases. The Department of Preventive Dentistry is involved in several collaborative research projects where the acquisition and development of the oral microbial ecosystem of children in relation to their oral health is monitored. We are seeking a highly motivated and talented individual who is interested in contributing to our understanding of the complexity of the oral microbial ecosystem in relation to oral health and disease.

Besides joining already ongoing projects in oral microbial ecology at the Department of Preventive Dentistry, the candidate will be expected to take an active role in the Research Priority Area of the University of Amsterdam on Personal Microbiome Health (https://pmh-uva.nl/). In addition, the candidate will be expected to contribute to research grant acquisition and supervision of junior researchers.

The candidate will be situated at ACTA within the Department of Preventive Dentistry, specialized in oral microbial ecology, oral microbiology and microbe-host interactions. The department comprises researchers experienced in various fields: clinical dentistry, molecular biology, microbiology, microbial ecology and bioinformatics and regularly hosts international PhD students and postdoctoral fellows. This is fostering a supportive and intellectually stimulating working environment.

We are looking for a Postdoc with experience in Reinforcement Learning, Large Language Models or Robot Learning for our NWO-funded project “TeNet: Text-to-Network for Fast and Energy-Efficient Robot Control”. This project considers the use of embeddings and Large Language Models for the fast and energy-efficient generation of neural networks for robot control.

Your task will be to develop and evaluate a new LLM-driven approach for fast reinforcement learning with natural language instructions for application to continuous control and robotic tasks. This project includes a collaboration with Finnish AI researchers in Helsinki (Finnish Center for AI & Aalto University), for which we provide travel funds for a 1-2 month research stay, with the option of a secondment to extend the duration of this position.

Please note the short runtime of this High-Gain/High-Risk project (1 year). A successful candidate will receive help and support for securing follow-up funding (eg Veni/NWO XS grants etc) or for moving to the next career stage. Hybrid working or a joint/visiting position is possible. At 0.7 FTE the position is offered for 1 year, a higher FTE employment is possible but shortens the time of employment.

We are looking for a motivated Postdoc with a strong background in advanced human cell culture systems, including organoids, and in molecular toxicology.

Within this project we are looking for a motivated postdoc to identify and map out Antarctic biodiversity values, and to quantify direct and cumulative human impacts on Antarctic terrestrial flora and fauna. Antarctic flora and fauna is dominated by mosses, lichens and small soil invertebrates, and these will be the primary focus in this position.

Serial Crystallography (SX) is an emerging method that allows visualizing the macromolecule interaction with light. SX is a so-called “pump–probe” experiment, where a short UV-Visible light laser pulse excites the chromophores in the molecule while an X-ray pulse is used to probe the newly formed state at a  certain delay after light excitation. As a result, the light-induced X-ray crystallographic electron densities are assigned to reactions and excited-state processes. Postdoctoral research position in SX and dynamic structural biology is available to study light inducible proteins essential for photosynthesis and photobiology. The SX results would be complemented by time-resolved spectroscopy.The position is available now for a minimum of one year, with the possibility of extension.
The research will be carried out at the VU under the supervision of Dr Volha Chukhutsina.

Despite robots increasingly entering our work lives, we know surprisingly little about their impact on jobs. Engineers are excited to build intelligent robotic applications with the aim to alleviate difficult, risky, or boring jobs, such as cleaning, bomb diffusion, transportation of goods or surveillance. Labor economists and public commentators, in turn, put forward gloomy scenarios of jobs becoming obsolete, degraded or void of meaning. Currently, however, we lack a rigorous insight into how robots are really used in situated work practice. Without such insight, engineers are in the dark about what impact robots have on work and have few methods of including work context into account when building robotic applications. This NWO-funded Vidi project aims to generate such insight by conducting several ethnographic studies of professional service robots at work.

In this context, we are looking for a candidate to fill one Postdoc position for a duration of two years. Starting date is flexible throughout 2024 and will be agreed on with the suitable candidate.

The postdoc will conduct ethnographic research under the supervision of dr. Anastasia V. Sergeeva and will be based at the KIN Center for Digital Innovation at the Vrije Universiteit. KIN research focuses on the development, use and business value of innovative organizational processes and technologies. This research center is a home to a multi-disciplinary group of researchers, with academic backgrounds in business administration, sociology, communication science, anthropology, philosophy, engineering, and computer science. The research contributes to an international field that is relatively new and multi-disciplinary. We work closely together with faculty and researchers from other universities and cooperate with an extensive network of business partners.