Postdoctoral Fellowship (28) at Delft University of Technology (TU Delft), Netherlands

We are looking for an enthusiastic and talented Postdoctoral Researcher to join the NWO-VIDI project Not-Just-Water, which investigates how multiple phases (e.g. air, water, debris) influence impact loads on structures during extreme hydrodynamic events. These events (such as (flash)floods, dam failures, coastal floods and tsunamis) generate highly unsteady, aerated flows whose interaction with buildings is poorly understood. In particular, the role of air during the impact remains a key knowledge gap.

In this position, you will focus on the effect of air on impact loads and pressures, performing advanced laboratory experiments that will deliver a comprehensive dataset on air-water characteristics during the impacts. Working in TU Delft’s Hydraulic Engineering laboratory, you will design and carry out large-scale tests using our dam-break facility and instrumented building models (impervious and with openings). Experiments will use Phase-Detection Probes, high-speed imaging and force/pressure measurements to simultaneously capture detailed air-water features and impact loads. Altogether, your research will deepen our understanding of entrained and entrapped air during extreme events, and through collaboration with academic and industry partners, it will provide essential information for the design of safer hydraulic infrastructure.

‘Cultivated meat’ the production of genuine meat products from in vitro culture of animal cells, is an emerging biotechnology within the field of cellular agriculture with the potential to revolutionise food production from both an environmental and ethical perspective. Unfortunately, higher eukaryotic cells in their unmodified state have severe limitations with respect to in vitro culture, presenting major challenges for the scalability and cost-effectiveness of cultivated meat bioprocesses. These include limited cellular lifespans, slow proliferation rates, demanding medium requirements and a preference for adherent growth, amongst others.

Cell engineering can solve these problems! We are hiring for multiple postdoctoral scientists to join the group for fully-funded projects of (an initial) 2 years. Within the Flack group, you will engineer and evolve bovine satellite cell lines with a variety of new and improved phenotypes, relating to (for example) suspension culture, signalling pathway activation and metabolic efficiency. Once new cell lines have been engineered and characterised, you will image them using a variety of microscopy methods, and collaborate with a team of computer vision scientists to build ML-based models for phenotype prediction, helping to accelerate the cell engineering cycle.

This vacancy is for a two-year postdoctoral position within the joint project “Quantum Markov Semigroups: From Geometry to Classification”, coordinated by Martijn Caspers (TU Delft) and Melchior Wirth (Universität Leipzig). The position will be fully based at TU Delft and primarily supervised by Martijn Caspers. Regular short research visits to Leipzig are an integral part of the project.

We are seeking candidates with a PhD in Mathematics who can successfully conduct research in one or more of the following areas:

• Von Neumann algebras
• Analysis of quantum information
• Quantum Markov semigroups
• Connections between operator algebras and geometric aspects of discrete groups or noncommutative spaces

During the postdoctoral appointment, there will be opportunities to pursue both independent and collaborative research. You will join our active Analysis Group at TU Delft, with established connections to researchers in quantum information physics. 

We are excited to announce an opportunity for a highly motivated postdoc in the field of WSN, IoT and Wireless Communication and Sensing. If you’re passionate about pushing the boundaries of technology, this is your chance to make a significant impact in areas such as:

• Design of Sensing platform and WSN
• Algorithms to calibrate sensors
• Prototyping and programming embedded systems/platforms
• Exposure to LoRa Networks and data collection over LoRa
• Hardware Design skills
• Fluent in English (written and spoken)

Join us and apply for one of the two available PostDoc positions below!

1.           Quantum Network Applications

The goal of this position is to explore new applications and use cases for quantum networks. The successful candidate is motivated by the challenge of making quantum networks useful for society, and thrives on engaging with diverse academic and/or industrial fields to uncover impactful applications. The ideal candidate is able to lead the direction of this research, shaping the application domains we explore based on their interests and vision for where quantum networks can make a difference.

The successful applicant has an excellent track record in quantum technologies, and a PhD in the field at the time of assuming the position.

2.           Quantum Network Systems

Our team has built QNodeOS, the world’s first operating system for quantum network nodes. This position advances that work—developing advanced quantum  software systems needed to run applications on emerging quantum networks. The ideal candidate is able to develop research directions in this nascent field, as part of our group’s mission to bring quantum networks to society.

The successful candidate has an excellent track record in computer science, computer engineering, or related fields, with an emphasis on software systems. They are a systems builder at heart, thriving on hands-on experimentation with real software systems, with the possibility to access real-world quantum network hardware. Prior expertise in operating systems is desirable. Prior knowledge in quantum technologies is a plus, but not required.

The steel industry is undergoing a major transition. Increasing use of lower-grade ores and recycled materials introduces higher concentrations of volatile impurities such as alkalis, sulfur and zinc. These elements circulate within ironmaking reactors, affecting furnace stability, energy efficiency and product quality. At the same time, the shift from coal-based Blast Furnace (BF) operations toward hydrogen-based Direct Reduction Processes (DRP) presents new process conditions that are not yet fully understood.

Within the CLICK project, you will address these challenges by generating new fundamental insights into the behaviour of circulating elements in high-temperature packed-bed reactors. Your work will support cleaner, more efficient and more circular ironmaking under increasingly demanding raw-material conditions. The CLICK project is a collaborative effort between Delft University of Technology and Tata Steel Netherlands. The research will be conducted in close cooperation with the industrial partner, ensuring strong alignment with real-world ironmaking challenges and facilitating knowledge transfer from laboratory-scale research to industrial practice.

Hydrogen is projected to be a major energy carrier in the future. Unfortunately, the use of hydrogen comes with a safety hazard as mixtures of hydrogen and air are, under certain conditions, flammable or even explosive. On top of that, even a tiny leakage of hydrogen, being a severe greenhouse gas, can contribute significantly to global warming. While hydrogen sensors exist nowadays, these sensors are not suited for all applications or have severe disadvantages.

Optical hydrogen sensors feature distinct advantages with respect to present-day technology. They can be made small, cheap and are intrinsically safe. The heart of these sensors is a metal hydride sensing layer of about 10 nm providing the optical signal. Upon exposure to hydrogen, the metal hydride will absorb hydrogen, which changes it’s optical properties. By measuring e.g. the transmission of the light, the hydrogen concentration can then be determined.

While optical hydrogen sensing materials have proven conceptually to work under ideal conditions (i.e. in chemically inert environments), the presence of humidity or species such as oxygen and KOH pose challenges and prevent these sensors from being used inside an electrolyser. The goal of this project is synthesize, characterize and functionally test hydrogen sensing materials to environments that mimic the environment inside an electrolyser. Once suitable candidate materials have been identified, these materials can be deposited on optical fibers and a real fiber-sensor can be tested. Eventually, the aim is to develop hydrogen sensors that can operate in the challenging environments of an electrolyzer, enabling higher conversion efficiency, predicitve maintanance and lower costs.

The Discrete Mathematics and Optimization group within the Delft Institute of Applied Mathematics at TU Delft is offering a full-time PhD position in the area of finite geometry.

Finite geometry studies finite structures that satisfy axioms of classical geometrical spaces such as the Euclidean and projective spaces. In this project, by developing novel combinatorial, algebraic, and probabilistic tools, you will work on resolving fundamental extremal problems in the area of finite geometry. These problems have connections to Ramsey theory, coding theory, and spectral graph theory.

The PhD will be supervised by Anurag Bishnoi.You will have the opportunity to collaborate with Postdocs, PhD candidates, and other faculty members of the research group. You will also get to work with various collaborators of Anurag Bishnoi.

Besides carrying out mathematical research and preparing scientific publications, you will be expected to actively participate in seminars and discussions within the department, as well as present your work at both national and international conferences and workshops. You will also carry out minor teaching tasks (at most 15% of your time). Teaching and communication will be in English. If desired, you can take Dutch language courses  offered by the TU Delft Language Center.

The Discrete Mathematics and Optimization group within the Delft Institute of Applied Mathematics at TU Delft is offering a full-time 2 year Postdoc position in the area of finite geometry.

Finite geometry studies finite structures that satisfy axioms of classical geometrical spaces such as the Euclidean and projective spaces. In this project, by developing novel combinatorial, algebraic, and probabilistic tools, you will work on resolving fundamental extremal problems in the area of finite geometry. These problems have connections to Ramsey theory, coding theory, and spectral graph theory.

The Posdoc will be supervised by Anurag Bishnoi. You will have the opportunity to collaborate with Postdocs, PhD candidates, and other faculty members of the research group. You will be able to establish new collaborations with the collaboration network of Anurag Bishnoi. You will have travel money for attending (on average) two international conferences per year. You will also be able to co-supervise bachelor’s and master’s projects.

This post-doctoral position focuses on developing fundamental algorithmic advances for dynamic planning and scheduling in multi-objective supply-chain management.  The emphasis is on uncertainty-aware algorithmic innovation, applied to the complex logistics of offshore energy supply chains.  These supply chains involve tightly interdependent stages, and strong sensitivity to environmental and weather conditions.

In the current state of the art, multi-objective planning and scheduling must integrate diverse and often conflicting decision perspectives.  This creates a growing need for decision-support models grounded in effective, efficient and scalable algorithms, including advanced AI and machine learning approaches.

In this position, you will design, implement, and mature such algorithmic methods, moving them toward practical use in offshore wind-farm installation planning.  You will lead research on scalability, dynamic re-planning, and disruption-aware control strategies within complex, uncertain supply-chain environments.  The specific methodological direction is open and will be shaped collaboratively with both academic researchers and industrial partners.

The successful applicant will join the STAR Lab at TU Delft’s Faculty of Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science, working closely with the Sequential Decision Making Group in the same faculty.

Delft University of Technology (TU Delft) is looking for a postdoctoral researcher within the Innovation for Delft Engineering Education (IDEE) initiative, on the theme Students taking responsibility for their own learning process.

This position offers a unique opportunity to combine educational research and innovation. Over the past years, our research team has developed a shared conceptual and empirical foundation describing what it means for students to take responsibility for learning, and how this is understood by both students and teachers, including an exploration of learning-related behaviors and attitudes across diverse educational contexts.

Building on this foundation, the next phase will focus on studying the impact and practical enactment of these insights. The aim is to move from understanding what responsibility in learning is, toward examining how it can be effectively fostered, practiced, and sustained in higher education.

In this position, you will design and conduct research-informed educational studies that investigate how students and teachers put responsibility for learning into practice, what enables or constrains it, and how educational interventions can support it. You will collaborate closely with educators, researchers, and policy stakeholders to ensure that your work contributes to sustainable, evidence-based educational change at TU Delft and across the 4TU network.

We are looking for a highly motivated and talented Postdoctoral Researcher to join the DigiOcean4Solar project. Offshore floating solar is a rapidly emerging renewable energy technology with the potential to meet global energy demands. However, scaling up floating solar farms requires deploying large floating structures over extensive sea surfaces, posing significant engineering and environmental challenges. As floating solar scales to multi-hectare deployments offshore, evaluating their performance and environmental impact under uncertainty becomes a critical scientific and engineering challenge. The DigiOcean4Solar project aims to pioneer a Digital Ocean environment to enable fast and reliable simulations of wind-wave-structure interactions in floating solar farms. This research will provide the essential knowledge and computational tools needed to optimize the design and deployment of large-scale floating solar farms, ensuring their economic viability and environmental sustainability.

In this postdoctoral position, you will lead the development of a probabilistic, error-aware surrogate model capable of delivering fast, uncertainty-quantified predictions for complex multiscale–multiphysics processes in OFPV farms. This research will build upon a multi-scale and multi-physics numerical modeling framework, with the goal of enabling rapid and robust probabilistic assessments for design, optimization, and environmental impact studies. More precisely, you will be designing a new computational methodology that integrates adaptive and error-aware probabilistic surrogate/reduced order models that leverage multifidelity modelling, and goal-oriented numerical error estimation. The resulting surrogate model will map uncertain meta-ocean conditions to key quantities of interest for OFPV performance and sustainability.

We are seeking a thoughtful, creative, and collaborative researcher excited to help shape an innovative flying testbed concept from its earliest stages.

In this role, you will take the lead in developing a complete modular UAV flying testbed design framework, spanning conceptual thinking, systematic design exploration, structural innovation, and detailed CAD work. You will also work closely with a group of MSc thesis students who will support the project with dedicated sub-tasks. The position offers an opportunity to combine independent scientific development with mentoring, teamwork, and design leadership.

(18) Postdoctoral Fellowship Position

Postdoc Fellowship Position summary/title: Postdoc in Structural Performance and Monitoring of Storm Surge Barriers

Deadline : 11 Jan 2026

View details & Apply

TU Delft, in collaboration with ProRail and Cohere Consultants, invites applications for a Postdoctoral Researcher to join the WaveGuard project — an ambitious initiative funded by TKI-HTSM. The project aims to develop a new generation of mitigation measures for low-frequency ground vibrations induced by railway traffic, using nonlinear and spatially varying metamaterials.

Despite decades of research, low-frequency railway vibrations (4–20 Hz) remain a persistent challenge, affecting both nearby residents and sensitive infrastructure. WaveGuard explores how advanced engineered materials can control, redirect, or damp these vibrations more efficiently than conventional solutions such as trenches or damping layers.

A crucial aspect of this position is the design and realization of a dedicated laboratory test setup. The postdoctoral researcher will take the lead in conceiving, building, and instrumenting a modular soil flume to experimentally validate the proposed metamaterial concept. This setup will serve as the cornerstone for the project’s proof-of-concept experiments in the second half of the appointment, providing the first empirical demonstration of the WaveGuard system.

In addition to experimental work, the postdoc will contribute to the numerical design and optimization of the metamaterial system using dedicated tools such as STEM, ensuring that the lab-scale tests and models reinforce each other.

We are looking for a candidate with a strong background in vibration and wave dynamics, metamaterials, and/or soil–structure interaction, and proven skills in experimental design and testing as well as numerical modelling (e.g., FEM). Experience with railway dynamics, soil mechanics, or nonlinear systems will be considered an asset. This position offers a unique opportunity to bridge fundamental research and hands-on experimentation, contributing to the development of sustainable, low-vibration railway infrastructure for the future.

Join the Materials Production, Refining and Recycling (MPRR) group in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering (MSE) at TU Delft and contribute to sustainable iron making. In this project, you will perform fundamental study on the relationship between electrowinning processing conditions and the deposited iron properties. The study will include:

• Development and optimization of the electrode interface
• Laboratory-scale experiments to investigate redox kinetics and iron deposition mechanism
• Material characterization of cathodically deposited iron
• Process optimization and energy efficicency calcuations
• Contribution to techno-economic analysis and sustainability assessment
• Dissemination of knowledge through scientific publications, conferences, and educatio

‘Cultivated meat’, the production of genuine meat products from in vitro culture of animal cells, is an emerging biotechnology within the field of cellular agriculture with the potential to revolutionise food production from both an environmental and ethical perspective. Unfortunately, higher eukaryotic cells have severe limitations when cultured in vitro, including limited cellular lifespans, slow proliferation rates and demanding medium requirements. Characterizing cell properties and identifying cell lines with promising phenotypes typically require months-long, expensive characterization experiments.

Modern computer vision pipelines can significantly speed up this characterization process! We are hiring a postdoctoral scientists to join the group for a fully-funded project of 2 years. Within the Computer Vision Lab at TU Delft, you will build deep-learning based vision pipelines to preprocess, segment cells and perform phenotype classification and regression on a variety of microscopy images. You will deal with images from multiple microscopy domains, in order to predict important cell parameters to determine the viability of cell lines. You will deal with curating large amounts of data obtained from novel cell lines by the Flack group, and collaborate with microscopy scientists on data aquisition questions.

We’re looking for someone with excellent software development and object-oriented programming skills, ideally with some experience in biomedical image processing.

Kwalitatieve gezondheidszorg draait niet alleen om goed georganiseerde ziekenhuizen en bekwame zorgprofessionals, maar is ook afhankelijk van een complex netwerk van ondersteunende systemen zoals toeleveringsketens, transport, energie- en waternetwerken. Wanneer een crisis toeslaat (denk aan overstromingen, pandemieën of andere verstoringen) komt dit netwerk onder zware druk te staan. De gevolgen zijn groot: ambulances die ziekenhuizen niet bereiken, tekorten aan medicijnen, apparatuur valt uit door stroomstoringen en juist de meest kwetsbare groepen verliezen toegang tot zorg van hoge kwaliteit. Binnen het HEALTH-RES-project (Ensuring critical resources for health system resilience) staat één centrale vraag voorop: Hoe vergroten we de veerkracht van zorgsystemen door kritieke infrastructuren te verbinden en te versterken, zodat zorg van hoge kwaliteit voor iedereen toegankelijk blijft – juist wanneer meerdere risico’s samenkomen?

Samen met ziekenhuizen, eerstelijnszorg en publieke gezondheidsorganisaties in Nederland onderzoeken we de huidige werkwijzen voor het inkopen en beschikbaar houden van essentiële zorgmiddelen, welke kwetsbaarheden er zijn en hoe we samen indicatoren kunnen ontwikkelen die inzicht geven in de impact van verstoringen op de toegang tot en kwaliteit van zorg. Deze inzichten voeden nieuwe data, modellen en beleidsadviezen en leveren een waardevolle bijdrage aan nationale én internationale debatten over de veerkracht van zorg, klimaatadaptatie en gezondheidsrechtvaardigheid.

In this Postdoc position, you will be working on the HAPPS project. The HAPSS project investigates the possibility of Hydrogen Electric Propulsion (HEP) for powering aircraft for short and medium length routes. The transition from turbine engines and wing tanks to a combination of hydrogen containers, fuel cells, electrical power buffering, with its associated cooling and heating requirements will introduce changes in instrumentation and flight deck procedures.

In this project, adaptations to flight deck instrumentation and procedures are developed and tested in manned simulation, and the safety of operations needs to be reassessed. You will work with TU Delft staff and students, developing and using relevant models of the HEP system to assess operational impact and safety, creating an integrated design for the control and monitoring of the propulsion system. This project focuses on human-machine interaction, a second post-doc addresses automation and monitoring, with the collaboration resulting in an integrated human-automation design. Using the simulation facilities (the SIMONA Research Simulator; https://simona.tudelft.nl), you will also set-up demonstrators and manned evaluations of the developed system.

In this Postdoc position, you will be working on the HAPSS project. The HAPSS project investigates the possibility of a Hydrogen Propulsion System (HPS) for powering aircraft for short and medium length routes. The transition from turbine engines and wing tanks to a combination of hydrogen containers, fuel cells, electrical power buffering, with its associated cooling and heating requirements will introduce changes in automation and monitoring procedures. In this project, HPS automation and monitoring systems will be developed and tested.

You will work with TU Delft staff and students, developing and using relevant models of the HPS to assess operational impact and safety, creating an integrated design for the control and monitoring of the propulsion system. This project focuses on HPS automation and monitoring. A second Postdoc position will address the human-machine interaction through inerface design, with the collaboration resulting in an integrated human-automation design.

The project is a collaboration between several companies and research institutes in the Netherlands and TU Delft. The work will be performed at TU Delft at the Control and Simulation (C&S) section. The C&S section of the faculty of Aerospace Engineering aims to advance the development of autonomous control systems and combined human-machine systems in aerospace, building on a solid theoretical basis and physical insights while exploiting theoretical progress in adjacent fields, and to validate these systems experimentally in world-class facilities, effectively closing the loop between theory and practice. C&S aims to be a leading research group in the integration, development and testing of new theories on control, autonomous and cognitive systems (with and without human elements).

Our lab studies how interacting charges and spins move through materials. To this end, the lab has developed a technique for imaging spin waves – microscopic waves in magnetic materials – based on magnetic sensing with nitrogen-vacancy (NV) spins in diamond.

Spin waves could enable information technology with new functionalities due to their wave nature, microwave frequencies, strong interactions, and low intrinsic dissipation. A key requirement is to realize efficient spin-wave control. In this project, you will develop superconductor-based control of spin waves while studying the interaction between magnets and superconductors with high spatial resolution and developing new ways to excite, guide, and detect spin waves.

To study the spin waves and the superconductors, you will use a cryogenic, NV imaging system that combines techniques from quantum optics and quantum information processing with device- and microwave engineering 

Climate extremes continue to intensify across Europe, creating complex environmental management challenges for river systems. Traditional infrastructure designed for single hazard mitigation purposes struggles to address the dual threat of increasingly frequent droughts and floods, highlighting the urgent need for adaptive Nature-Based Solutions (NBSs). While programmes like Room for the River have successfully demonstrated flood mitigation benefits, the complex effects of climate change necessitate innovative approaches that can simultaneously address both flood and drought hazards.

This project aims to develop and optimise measures that maximise interseasonal water retention during droughts while allowing for flood risk mitigation during high-flow periods (e.g. hierarchical networks of floodplain channels and lakes). By combining field monitoring and numerical modelling approaches, we will assess how reactivated paleochannels, constructed floodplain systems, or other solutions can create adaptive infrastructure that capitalises on natural riverine dynamics. This knowledge will be used to determine scalable design principles for climate-resilient river management across Europe.