10 Postdoctoral Fellowship at Vrije University Amsterdam, Netherlands

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.

Our theory group is a worldwide leader in studying the statistical physics of living systems, ranging from chromosomes to migrating cells and multicellular tissues. We aim to understand the emergent functional dynamics and organization of living systems in close collaboration with various experimental labs. We currently have an opening for an ERC funded 3-year Post Doc position.

We are looking for highly motivated applicants with a PhD to strengthen our research team in an interactive and
collaborative environment.

The vacancy is embedded in the section Chemistry for Environment and Health of the Amsterdam Institute for Life and Environment (A-LIFE) in the Faculty of Science of the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. A-LIFE brings together the former departments of Environment & Health, Molecular Cell Biology and Ecological Sciences. A-LIFE seeks to connect properties and emerging behaviours across all scales, from molecules to ecosystems, including human populations. The section Chemistry for Environment and Health, headed by prof. dr. Marja Lamoree, investigates environmental and human exposure, focusing on the development and application  of advanced analytical methods for accurate, robust exposure of the assessment to a wide variety of chemicals, and including micro- and nanoplastics.

The successful candidate will investigate investigate protein-nucleic acids interactions using high-throughput force and fluorescence spectroscopy approaches, such as magnetic tweezers (MT) and total internal reflection fluorescence microscopy (TIRFM).

The NWO-funded project The Holocaust in “the Provinces”: Local Dynamics in the Nazi-Occupied Netherlands (1925 – 1950) was launched in January 2023 under the leadership of dr. Geraldien von Frijtag Drabbe Künzel and prof.dr. Ido de Haan (Utrecht University, Department of History and Art History) and dr. Dienke Hondius (VU Amsterdam, History). With two PhD students the team has started investigating how the Dutch local community´s specific political and social structures and cultural customs impacted the persecution of the Jews in the Second World War, and, vice versa, how the persecution affected these structures and customs. In order to understand the genocidal process at a communal level, and its specific structures and customs, the project covers the period from the years leading up to the genocide, as well as its immediate aftermath (1925-1950). For more details, see https://localholocaust.nl.

For the next years of the project, we are seeking a post-doc to develop a synthetic account of communal aspects of the Holocaust in the Dutch provinces. In terms of geographical scope, the perspective switches here from the local to the intercommunal scope, and to dimensions of persecution of possibilities of evasion and escape between local communities. A key-question is to what extent escape routes were paved by pre-existing intercommunal personal ties and networks. A crucial aspect of this position in the project is to digitally process larger sets of data and to visualize local dynamics and intercommunal exchanges in a digital atlas of the persecution of Jews in the Dutch provinces. For more details on the Postdoc research, see https://localholocaust.nl/subproject-3-intercommunal-intersections-in-jewish-trajectories-of-evasion-and-escape

In food, biotechnology and pharmaceutical applications various organisms are used to produce metabolites, proteins or biomass. The organisms used for it are carefully chosen and many strains have been developed by decades of strain improvement. Such improvements are often based on so called laboratory or experimental evolution. In addition to the applied aspect of such evolved strains, their characterization has allowed to unravel many fundamental biological questions on the evolution, physiology and genetics of various organisms.

We have recently developed a technology for experimental evolution that differs from existing systems. Within this project the method will be improved and automated, and a diverse set of organisms will be evolved and characterized in depth. This includes the evolution of food and pharma related microorganisms and eukaryotic cells, including microbial communities and host-phage co-evolution.  

While recognition and respect for neurodiversity are growing, the impact of large societal shifts, such as digitalization, is felt disproportionally by a broad group of neurodivergent youth (including borderline to mild intellectual disability-MID, autism and ADHD). Media-lessons and -interventions for the general youth population have been developed but it remains unclear what interventions are suitable for neurodivergent youth. In this project, DigAble, the overarching goal is therefore to investigate how neurodivergent youth may become more resilient and less vulnerable in the online world in order to lower digital inequity. We want a better understanding of needs, suitable tools, and appropriate policies, in particular for neurodivergent youth and their caregivers. DigAble answers to the call that seven government ministries posed for insight into the effects of digitalization, with funding through the Nationale WetenschapsAgenda (NWA).

In DigAble we will 1) describe the needs and capacities of neurodivergent youth, their parents, educators, carers, and managers in this sector and how these should be matched with support, 2) gain insight into practice elements of media interventions for evidence on differential effects and 3) integrate findings from aim 1 and 2 to co-create an optimal decision-making framework for youth, their families, schools and care organizations, and professionals.

This postdoc position is part of the Vidi project “Globalization Unravelling? The Geopolitics of Europe-China Tech Decoupling” funded by NWO (the Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek). In this project, we analyse and explain the geopolitical drivers behind emergent decoupling between Europe and China in the realm of technology. The project has three ‘workstreams’ to which you will contribute. In the project we place contemporary geopolitical competition over technology in a wider historical context by analysing ‘three waves of techno-nationalism’ going back to the Cold War as well as the competition with Japan in the 1980s (WS1). Against this background we will analyse how political and geopolitical drivers are shaping policies, practices and contestation around contemporary technological decoupling between Europe and China and explain (variation in) technological decoupling practices and responses in Europe and across different tech domains (WPS2). In addition, the project develops novel theorisation around technonationalism and the emergent topic of decoupling and recoupling in a globalized world (WS3).  

You will be part of a team consisting of the Principal Investigator (PI), a PhD, and a research assistant. 

While recognition and respect for neurodiversity are growing, the impact of large societal shifts, such as digitalization, is felt disproportionally by a broad group of neurodivergent youth (including borderline to mild intellectual disability-MID, autism and ADHD). Media-lessons and -interventions for the general youth population have been developed but it remains unclear how suitable interventions are for neurodivergent youth. In this project, DigAble, the overarching goal is therefore to investigate how neurodivergent youth may become more resilient and less vulnerable in the online world in order to lower digital inequity. We want a better understanding of needs, suitable tools, and appropriate policies, in particular for neurodivergent youth and their caregivers. DigAble answers to the call that seven government ministries posed for insight into the effects of digitalization, with funding through the Nationale WetenschapsAgenda (NWA).

 

In DigAble we will 1) describe the needs and capacities of neurodivergent youth, their parents, educators, carers, and managers in this sector and how these should be matched with support, 2) gain insight into practice elements of media interventions for evidence on differential effects and 3) integrate findings from aim 1 and 2 to co-create an optimal decision-making framework for youth, their families, schools and care organizations, and professionals.