Ghent University, Belgium invites online Application for number of Fully Funded PhD Degree at various Departments. We are providing a list of Fully Funded PhD Programs available at Ghent University, Belgium.
Eligible candidate may Apply as soon as possible.
(01) PhD Degree – Fully Funded
PhD position summary/title: Doctoral fellow
The DECIDE research group of IDLAB is seeking a highly motivated and talented PhD student to join its team. DECIDE conducts research on Distributed and Embodied Computing in Dynamic Environments. Our research spans several related areas of expertise: generative AI for robotic planning and control, cognitive control, distributed perception and control, and HW-SW co-design of algorithms. Our research is applied across diverse sectors, including agriculture, manufacturing and remote sensing. Check out the team website at https://decide.ugent.be
Topic
As robots move from caged industrial settings to dynamic environments shared with humans, safety becomes paramount. To minimize the impact of a collision with a human, robots should require low-latency “reflexes”. Upon a tactile sensation, the robot must immediately perform active control, such as retracting its arm, to mitigate.
To meet the strict timing constraints, these control algorithms cannot rely on centralized processing. Instead, they must be embedded locally within each join or limb. Moreover, since a reflex often involves coordination between multiple joints, a distributed compute solution is required.
In this PhD, you will design distributed control algorithms tailored for real-time robot operation. A core focus of this research is hardware-algorithm co-design: your algorithms must be optimized for mapping onto hardware accelerators, ranging from conventional embedded systems to emerging unconventional platforms (e.g. probabilistic computing). The research will define the architectural requirements for the next generation of robotic hardware.
Prospective candidates must thus have a strong interest in algorithmic development as well as embedded hardware integration.
Role and responsibilities
Deadline : Jun 30, 2026
(02) PhD Degree – Fully Funded
PhD position summary/title: Doctoral fellow
The HIV Cure Research Center (HCRC), headed by prof. Linos Vandekerckhove (PI) and prof. Sarah Gerlo (co-PI), is dedicated to multifaceted research with the ultimate objective of achieving an HIV cure. Research activities at HCRC are profoundly translational, characterized by the fusion of studies conducted on samples derived from individuals living with HIV, complemented by in vitro and in vivo validation in experimental model systems. Our endeavours encompass three pivotal domains: 1) fundamental research into the establishment and perpetuation of HIV reservoirs, 2) refinement and creation of novel assays for HIV reservoir monitoring in patients, and 3) the development of innovative strategies for eradicating HIV reservoirs. In addition, we aim to take our innovations to the clinical stage, conducting trials that push the boundaries of HIV cure research.
With nearly 40 million people infected worldwide and close to 20,000 in Belgium, HIV remains a major public health problem. The introduction of combination antiretroviral therapy (ART) has significantly improved the quality of life and lifespan of people living with HIV. Although ART potently inhibits HIV replication and partially restores immune functions, it does not completely eliminate the virus, leading to HIV rebound within 2-3 weeks after treatment interruption in all but exceptional cases. The proposed PhD project focuses on the source of viral rebound following HIV treatment interruption. The candidate will have access to state-of-the-art technologies (Single Cell RNA Sequencing, ATAC-Sequencing, ChIP-sequencing; MIP-sequencing, phenotypic analysis by Flow Cytometry, and data science training) as well as patient resources (clinical datasets, leukapheresis samples, and ex vivo lymphoid tissues from patients).
Overall, this project aims to uncover new molecular mechanisms driving HIV persistence and latency reversal, offering potential targets for future therapeutic interventions. Through this approach, we seek to lay the foundation for innovative strategies to achieve sustained viral remission and ultimately cure HIV infection.
Deadline : Feb 07, 2026
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(03) PhD Degree – Fully Funded
PhD position summary/title: Doctoral fellow
Many industrial and healthcare applications demand real-time knowledge of the location, status, and activities of both people and equipment. Traditionally, this has required separate, specialized wireless systems for communication, radar-based sensing, and localization—each relying on dedicated hardware. However, the emerging field of joint wireless communication, sensing, and localization offers a unified approach that combines data transmission with simultaneous environmental awareness and position estimation. Ultra-Wideband (UWB) technology, in particular, stands out as a strong candidate for this integration due to its large bandwidth, which enables high-precision localization, robust communication, and fine-grained sensing. In this PhD project, you will develop advanced signal processing techniques that empower a single UWB multi-antenna radio platform to perform all these functions concurrently, significantly enhancing the situational awareness and versatility of deployed wireless systems.
- You study how to implement both localization and radar sensing capabilities using a single radio platform. Traditional localization systems typically rely on multiple anchor nodes—often three to four—strategically placed around the perimeter of the coverage area. In contrast, your approach leverages a single infrastructure node equipped with multiple antennas. By analyzing the phase, polarization, and timing characteristics of incoming signals across these antennas, you will be able to simultaneously estimate the distance, angle of arrival, orientation, and even classify the activity types of mobile tags and individuals. This method significantly reduces hardware complexity while enhancing spatial awareness and functionality. Your work will involve designing advanced algorithms that efficiently utilize UWB signal features (RSSI, channel impulse response, phase and amplitude data, Doppler maps,..) to support both high-precision localization and radar-based sensing.
- You will develop adaptive algorithms that dynamically select the optimal radio configuration based on the specific requirements of each application. The radio platform supports a range of physical layer settings, which must be intelligently adjusted in real time to account for factors such as obstacle types, energy efficiency, and desired detection range. These algorithms will enable the system to autonomously optimize performance for varying operational conditions, ensuring reliable communication, accurate localization, and efficient sensing across diverse environments.
Deadline : Feb 28, 2026
(04) PhD Degree – Fully Funded
PhD position summary/title: Doctoral fellow
Ghent University is a world of its own. Employing more than 15.000 people, it is actively involved in education and research, management and administration, as well as technical and social service provision on a daily basis. It is one of the largest, most exciting employers in the area and offers great career opportunities.
With its 11 faculties and more than 85 departments offering state-of-the-art study programmes grounded in research in a wide range of academic fields, Ghent University is a logical choice for its staff and students.
Deadline :Feb 16, 2026
(05) PhD Degree – Fully Funded
PhD position summary/title: Doctoral fellow
Ghent University is a top 100 university and one of the major universities in Belgium. Our 11 faculties offer a wide range of courses and conduct in-depth research within a wide range of scientific domains. Ghent University occupies a specific position among the Flemish universities. We are a socially committed and pluralistic university that is open to all students, regardless of their ideological, political, cultural or social background.
In its mission statement, Ghent University identifies itself as a socially committed university. This implies that the institution reflects about the positive impact that its activities can have upon society, and that it attempts to optimize that impact. It also implies the reflection about the potential negative impact of activities upon society, and the attempt of minimizing such impact.
Over the course of its 200 year history Ghent University has built up a strong scientific reputation. Ghent University invests both in fundamental, high risk science as in applied research. The university is known for its scientific expertise in life sciences and medicine, materials and agricultural science, veterinary medicine, psychology and history, and many more.
Deadline : Mar 15, 2026
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(06) PhD Degree – Fully Funded
PhD position summary/title: Doctoral fellow
The HIV Cure Research Center (HCRC), headed by prof. Linos Vandekerckhove (PI) and prof. Sarah Gerlo (co-PI), is dedicated to multifaceted research with the ultimate objective of achieving an HIV cure. Research activities at HCRC are profoundly translational, characterized by the fusion of studies conducted on samples derived from individuals living with HIV, complemented by in vitro and in vivo validation in experimental model systems. Our endeavors encompass three pivotal domains: 1) fundamental research into the establishment and perpetuation of HIV reservoirs, 2) refinement and creation of novel assays for HIV reservoir monitoring in patients, and 3) the development of innovative strategies for eradicating HIV reservoirs. In addition, we aim to take our innovations to the clinical stage, conducting trials that push the boundaries of HIV cure research.
With nearly 40 million people infected worldwide and close to 20,000 in Belgium, HIV remains a major public health problem. The introduction of combination antiretroviral therapy (ART) has significantly improved the quality of life and lifespan of people living with HIV. Although ART potently inhibits HIV replication and partially restores immune functions, it does not completely eliminate the virus, leading to HIV rebound within 2-3 weeks after treatment interruption in all but exceptional cases.
With a combination of both experimental and computational approaches, the HCRC provides an excellent environment for interdisciplinary research focusing on the understanding of the viral host factors influencing the HIV reservoir. The proposed PhD project focuses on analysis of multi-omics bulk, single-cell and spatial transcriptomic data from tissue samples of people living with HIV (PLWH). The candidate will develop new bioinformatic pipelines and perform integrative analysis of different layers of single-cell and bulk data with the aim to generate novel insights into the mechanisms responsible for HIV persistence in ART-treated PLWH.
Deadline : Feb 07, 2026
(07) PhD Degree – Fully Funded
PhD position summary/title: Doctoral fellow
Ghent University is a world of its own. Employing more than 15.000 people, it is actively involved in education and research, management and administration, as well as technical and social service provision on a daily basis. It is one of the largest, most exciting employers in the area and offers great career opportunities.
With its 11 faculties and more than 85 departments offering state-of-the-art study programmes grounded in research in a wide range of academic fields, Ghent University is a logical choice for its staff and students.
The Research Unit Plasma Technology (RUPT) at Ghent University is seeking a highly motivated PhD candidate to join our research program on the plasma-assisted development of advanced tissue engineering scaffolds. The project explores how cold plasmas can be used to tailor surface chemistry, surface morphology, introduce bioactive functionalities, and create innovative scaffolds that support cell adhesion, proliferation, and differentiation.
The successful candidate will modify polymeric and composite biomaterials using plasma reactors, develop plasma-based coatings, and control surface chemistry and morphology to guide cellular responses. The work will involve plasma reactor operation, surface modification, advanced material characterization, and biological evaluation in collaboration with biomedical partners at UGent and Hasselt University (BIOMED Institute).
This PhD offers a unique opportunity to work at the interface of plasma science, materials engineering, and regenerative medicine, within a dynamic and internationally recognized research environment.
Deadline : Feb 28, 2026
(08) PhD Degree – Fully Funded
PhD position summary/title: Doctoral fellow
Unpacking the asylum procedure in its intersecting linguistic, sociocultural, psychological and legal dimensions’ (hereafter UNPACK) is an interdisciplinary and interuniversity iBOF project investigating fairness in asylum procedures. Asylum procedures are challenging, partly due to the diverse socio-cultural and linguistic backgrounds of all actors involved (such as applicants, officials, interpreters, and lawyers) and the interactions between them.
The UNPACK project integrates insights from four disciplines – linguistics, anthropology, psychology and law – to examine the lived experiences of those involved. Through in-depth ethnographic research of specific case studies and the broader organizational context, UNPACK seeks to gain a deeper understanding of the asylum procedure, in order to develop a new, comprehensive and evidence-based framework of fairness.
With iBOF funding, the Flemish universities pool resources from their research funds to support frontier research. UNPACK is coordinated by Karel Arnaut (anthropology, KU Leuven), Ilse Derluyn (social work, UGent), Katrijn Maryns (applied linguistics, UGent) and Ellen Desmet (law, UGent). The project is embedded in a unique collaboration – the first of its kind in Europe – with the Office of the Commissioner General for Refugees and Stateless Persons (CGRS), the Belgian authority responsible for deciding on applications for international protection.
Deadline : Mar 15, 2026
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(09) PhD Degree – Fully Funded
PhD position summary/title: Doctoral fellow
Ghent University is a world of its own. Employing more than 15.000 people, it is actively involved in education and research, management and administration, as well as technical and social service provision on a daily basis. It is one of the largest, most exciting employers in the area and offers great career opportunities. With its 11 faculties and more than 85 departments offering state-of-the-art study programmes grounded in research in a wide range of academic fields, Ghent University is a logical choice for its staff and students.
Deadline :Jan 31, 2026
(10) PhD Degree – Fully Funded
PhD position summary/title: Doctoral fellow
We are seeking to hire one fully funded PhD researcher as part of a project that studies “Innovation and documentation in transitional justice”. This specific PhD project will focus on initiatives documenting violations of IHRL and IHL in the Philippines.
The ideal candidate has an interdisciplinary profile, covering at least social & legal studies related to human rights and transitional justice. They are open to using or have experience with various relevant empirical research methods (quantitative or qualitative), and have sound working knowledge of the context and the various topics studied as part of this research project (see below).
The researcher will be based at the Human Rights Centre at the Faculty of Law and Criminology of Ghent University. On site presence is crucial given the highly collaborative nature of the project.
The selected candidate will be offered a position of limited duration as PhD researcher (12 months initially, with 36 months extension upon passing the first year PhD requirements).
Deadline : Mar 15, 2026
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(11) PhD Degree – Fully Funded
PhD position summary/title: Doctoral fellow
- You will conduct scientific research with the aim of obtaining a doctoral degree.
- Your work is framed within the project Model-based Efficiency and Lifetime Optimization of Drivetrains. The project focuses on improving the sustainability and reliability of drivetrain systems by combining advanced simulation techniques with data-driven models.
- The project involves close collaboration with experimental facilities as well as simulation and condition-monitoring experts, ensuring a multidisciplinary environment.
- The project aims to develop high-fidelity dynamic multi-body simulation (MBS) models with elastic bodies and elasto-hydrodynamic (EHD) couplings, extended to account for wear- and fatigue-induced degradation of machine elements.
- Your core research tasks include:
- Developing advanced MBS/EHD models for drivetrain systems, incorporating transient tribological changes.
- Creating machine-learning-based surrogate models to enable rapid efficiency and lifetime predictions under realistic operating conditions.
- Validating the developed models using experimental data from drivetrain test benches equipped with load, temperature, vibration, and acoustic sensors.
- Integrating the models into a Model-Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) framework to ensure reusability and scalability.
- To achieve this, you will work with high-fidelity simulation tools, machine learning algorithms, and experimental condition-monitoring systems (accelerometers, acoustic emission sensors).
Deadline : Feb 15, 2026
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(12) PhD Degree – Fully Funded
PhD position summary/title: Doctoral fellow
We are looking for a highly motivated PhD candidate to join an interdisciplinary project at the intersection of plasma technology, biomaterials and tissue engineering. The research focuses on developing next-generation scaffolds enhanced with plasma-based coatings and bioactive functionalities to improve tissue regeneration.
- Operate and optimize non-thermal plasma systems for biomaterial modification
- Produce tissue engineering scaffolds using 3D printing and/or electrospinning
- Develop plasma-based coatings and functional surfaces for tissue engineering scaffolds
- Perform surface characterization using advanced techniques (XPS, FTIR, SEM, AFM)
- Evaluate biological responses (cell adhesion, proliferation, differentiation) in collaboration with biomedical partners
- Analyse data and translate findings into scientific insights
- Write scientific publications, and present at international conferences
- Contribute to the scientific activities of the research group
- Assist in supervising students and supporting teaching activities
Deadline : Feb 28, 2026
(13) PhD Degree – Fully Funded
PhD position summary/title: Doctoral fellow
This PhD position forms part of a new interdisciplinary FWO research project at KU Leuven and Ghent University. Situated at the intersection of conflict studies, migration studies and urban studies, this project sets out to investigate the formation of transnational ‘urban warscapes’ between cities in Eastern Congo and Flanders. From the specific perspective of female everyday experiences, this project aims to provide a better spatial understanding of the dialectical relationship between war, migration and urbanisation across transnational geographies.
A team of researchers trained in urbanism and political anthropology will generate original scientific data through collaborative multi-sited fieldwork in secondary cities in both D.R. Congo and Flanders, involving both qualitative and quantitative data collection methods. The team will investigate the transnational mobility and reconfiguration of conflict narratives and social tensions that emerge from the protracted civil war in Eastern DRC, and its impact on urban settlement patterns and home-making practices (with specific focus on the role of women) in the Congolese diaspora in Flanders. Ultimately, the project will deliver a novel transnational epistemological and analytical framework and empirically grounded theory-formation on the reconfiguration of urban spaces through the de- and re-territorialisation of violent conflict dynamics within transnational fields.
Deadline : Feb 16, 2026
(14) PhD Degree – Fully Funded
PhD position summary/title: Doctoral fellow
We are seeking to hire one fully funded PhD researcher as part of the ERC project “Innovation and documentation. Reconstructing the paradigm of transitional justice from the ground up”.
The PhD project focuses on initiatives documenting violations of IHRL and IHL in the Palestinian context.
The ideal candidate has an interdisciplinary profile, covering at least social & legal studies related to human rights and transitional justice. They are open to using or have experience with various relevant empirical research methods (quantitative or qualitative), and have sound working knowledge of the context and the various topics studied as part of this research project (see below).
The researcher will be based at the Human Rights Centre at the Faculty of Law and Criminology of Ghent University. On site presence is crucial given the highly collaborative nature of the project. Longer periods of empirical data collection in the Philippines are equally crucial.
The selected candidate will be offered a position of limited duration as PhD researcher (12 months initially, with 36 months extension upon passing the first year PhD requirements).
We encourage candidates who self-identify as belonging to a minority group to apply and our recruitment process is aimed at ensuring inclusion and diversity.
DESCRIPTION OF THE BROADER RESEARCH PROJECT
The candidate will be part of a broader research project on the role of documentation in contemporary transitional justice processes – including ones that are developed in contexts where no peace agreement was signed or no political transition took place (like contexts of ongoing conflict).
Deadline : Mar 15, 2026
(15) PhD Degree – Fully Funded
PhD position summary/title: Doctoral fellow
In your PhD, you will assist in guiding the development and upscaling of the RUB-UP technology, specifically through the evaluation and optimization of the environmental sustainability, economic feasibility and circularity of this innovative process. Tasks within the PhD are:
- Mapping the entire value chain for recycling waste tyres within RUB-UP
- Construct mass and energy balances for the RUB-UP technology supported by chemical engineering and process simulation
- Prospective life cycle assessment (LCA) specifically focused on climate change, resource use, human toxicity and freshwater ecotoxicity
- Techno-economic assessment (TEA)
- Circularity assessment (CA)
You will work in close collaboration with your promotors, other STEN colleagues, and partners of the RUB-UP consortium.
The scientific findings should lead to publications in international peer reviewed journals and should be presented at international conferences. The final goal is a PhD thesis in which the scientific findings will be combined.
Deadline : Feb 15, 2026
(16) PhD Degree – Fully Funded
PhD position summary/title: Doctoral fellow
The HIV Cure Research Center (HCRC), headed by prof. Linos Vandekerckhove (PI) and prof. Sarah Gerlo (co-PI), is dedicated to multifaceted research with the ultimate objective of achieving an HIV cure. Research activities at HCRC are profoundly translational, characterized by the fusion of studies conducted on samples derived from individuals living with HIV, complemented by in vitro and in vivo validation in experimental model systems. Our endeavors encompass three pivotal domains: 1) fundamental research into the establishment and perpetuation of HIV reservoirs, 2) refinement and creation of novel assays for HIV reservoir monitoring in patients, and 3) the development of innovative strategies for eradicating HIV reservoirs. In addition, we aim to take our innovations to the clinical stage, conducting trials that push the boundaries of HIV cure research.
With nearly 40 million people infected worldwide and close to 20,000 in Belgium, HIV remains a major public health problem. The introduction of combination antiretroviral therapy (ART) has significantly improved the quality of life and lifespan of people living with HIV. Although ART potently inhibits HIV replication and partially restores immune functions, it does not completely eliminate the virus, leading to HIV rebound within 2-3 weeks after treatment interruption in all but exceptional cases.
The current project centers on the study of the HIV reservoir in situ, in human tissues, using state-of-the art methods including CITEseq and spatial omics. Findings from these studies will be validated using both in vitro models as well as humanized mice.
Overall, this project aims to uncover new molecular mechanisms driving HIV persistence and latency , offering potential targets for future therapeutic interventions. Through this approach, we seek to lay the foundation for innovative strategies to achieve sustained viral remission and ultimately cure HIV infection.
Deadline : Feb 07, 2026
(17) PhD Degree – Fully Funded
PhD position summary/title:
The General objective of this project is to build-up knowledge and develop models and tools that enable the accurate prediction of the CO2 uptake of cement-based materials during their service life. In line with the Fit-for-55 plan, Flanders aims to reduce CO₂ emissions, pushing the cement industry to cut its carbon footprint and account for CO₂ uptake in cement-based materials to meet future Environmental Product Declaration requirements. Existing research mainly focuses on reinforced concrete (corresponding to 40% of cement use) and CEM I cement, leading to inaccuracies in estimating CO₂ capture, especially for other cement-based materials and modern blended cements. This project will expand research to include mortars, recycled concrete aggregates, and shaped products, considering various curing processes, material characteristics, and carbonation conditions to better predict the degree of carbonation (DoC). The project will build a comprehensive carbonation database for construction products in service. The technology will enable accurate computation of the CO2 uptake of cement-based materials. It will support material modifications to boost CO2 uptake and material design for carbon sink.
Concrete project objective are:
1) Construct a comprehensive database for natural carbonation of cement-based materials. Data will be validated and complemented with replicable experiments on the various types of products.
2) Determine the effect of curing (moist, autoclave, steam) on the DoC of cementitious binders, including blended cements. Develop curing-specific DoC prediction models and validate against experimental results.
3) Determine the effect of controlled exposure conditions on the DoC of fibre cement materials, recycled concrete aggregates and recycled concrete fines, construction blocks and sandwich panels.
4) Identify the main drivers towards fast carbonation of cement-based materials (including porosity, binder composition, curing methods) and conduct a sensitivity analysis. Make recommendations for the design of cement-based materials optimized for a rapid and reliable CO2 uptake. This will include at least eight material formulations (including fibre cement products, recycled aggregates, construction blocks and sandwich panels).
Deadline : Jan 31, 2026
(18) PhD Degree – Fully Funded
PhD position summary/title:
Wireless systems are omnipresent in our daily life, but it is far from perfect, especially for professional applications, where stable quality of service with bounded latency, guaranteed packet delivery rate is a must. Today, we still see Wi-Fi coverage is far from uniform, high variations of the Wi-Fi signal strength can be observed at different locations. Co-located Wi-Fi access points sharing the same spectrum compete against each other rather than collaborate to serve users. In this PhD position, you will research solutions to tackle these issues and improve wireless performance and efficiency together with the members of Software-Defined Radio team in IDLab.
- You will enhance WiFi design in view of distributed MIMO, and/or coordinated multi-AP operation (under study in the Wi-Fi 8 standardisation workgroup), using Hardware Description Language on FPGA, based on the open-source openwifi project (https://github.com/open-sdr/openwifi).
- You are also encouraged to design higher networking layer functionality and driver in Linux environment, to fully exploit the distributed MIMO and coordinated multi-AP feature.
- You publish and present results both at international conferences and in scientific journals.
- You will combine theoretical design with experimental proof-of-concept validation by setting up prototyping environments in our test lab considering concrete professional use cases (industry 4.0, mission-critical applications, professional multimedia applications, etc.)
- You will participate in the framework of national and European research projects, and collaborate on a technical level with research partners from industry.
- You will assist in limited educational tasks of the research group.
- This research will lead to a PhD degree. Throughout the complete PhD period, you receive a full-time, attractive salary.
Deadline : Sep 30, 2026
(19) PhD Degree – Fully Funded
PhD position summary/title: Doctoral fellow
- We are looking for a PhD student in the topic of software and systems security, in particular for techniques to find, mitigate, and fix bugs and vulnerabilities in code written in C/C++/Rust. Many existing tools and techniques for finding vulnerabilities in (large) C/C++/Rust code bases require that developers enter domain-specific knowledge (such as which functions are unsafe, which function return values should be checked, etc.), or they are too slow & memory-intensive to be used by developers on their own machine during development. In this research, you will research techniques that do not require domain-specific knowledge and that do scale to be usable during development.
- For this research, you conduct strategic basic research into the following topics based on your expertise and preferences, and in agreement with your supervisor: (i) techniques to find bugs in C/C++/Rust code bases, not based on hard-coded rules, but from learning rules from the code base under test; (ii) automatically fixing bugs in C/C++/Rust code bases; (iii) improving existing static analyses for C/C++/Rust code bases by making them scalable to (very) large code bases.
- You will help in translating your own and related academic research results into more mature knowledge and capabilities such that they can more easily be adapted by industry.
- You will collaborate with colleagues working on related topics in the software and systems security domain, e.g., to share common infrastructure and datasets.
- You publish and present results both at international conferences and in scientific journals, using open science practices.
- This research will lead to a PhD degree. Throughout the complete PhD period, you receive a full-time, attractive salary.
- You assist in limited educational tasks of the research group, namely being a teaching assistant for one one-semester course.
Deadline : Jan 31, 2026
(20) PhD Degree – Fully Funded
PhD position summary/title: Doctoral fellow
The Machine-At-The-End (MATE) attack model concerns adversaries that try to get unauthorized access to software assets, or make unauthorized use of such assets, on machines over which they have full control to execute, inspect, reverse engineer, and manipulate the software using all kinds of static and dynamic analysis and tampering techniques. MATE software protections (SPs) are techniques applied to the software, such as obfuscations and anti-tampering techniques, that aim to protect the software against such attacks, i.e., they try to safeguard the confidentiality and integrity of assets in the software. The domain of MATE software protection urgently requires solutions for some major problems, as we currently lack (1) standardized, broadly applicable methods to assess software protection strength; (2) automated decision support tools to determine which protections to apply and how on given use cases, (3) the necessary insights into attacker capabilities, in particular in this age of AI.
- You will conduct strategic basic research in the domain of MATE software protection, on any of the following topics based on your expertise and preferences, and in agreement with your supervisor: (i) decision support for the use of software protection tools (i.e., to decide which protections to apply where in a program); (ii) novel obfuscations and obfuscation recipes to defeat LLMs and other AI-based reverse engineering tools; (iii) the use of AI techniques and LLMs to optimize reverse engineering strategies; (iv) modeling techniques to assess the required effort to mount reverse engineering and tampering attacks on software; (v) integration of software protection techniques in industrial development life cycles.
- Conducting design science research in the selected topic, you will develop new solutions for urgent problems. Those solutions will take the form of new constructs, models, and methods (i.e., algorithms and best practices). You will then develop prototype software implementations of the models and methods you design, to evaluate and validate them on relevant software samples.
- You will help in translating your own and related academic research results into more mature knowledge and capabilities, e.g., at technology readiness level 6 or 7, such that they can more easily be adapted by industry.
- You will collaborate with colleagues working on related topics in the MATE software protection domain, e.g., to share common infrastructure and datasets.
- You publish and present results both at international conferences and in scientific journals, using open science practices.
- This research will lead to a PhD degree. Throughout the complete PhD period, you receive a full-time, attractive salary.
- You assist in limited educational tasks of the research group, namely being a teaching assistant for one one-semester course.
Deadline : Jan 31, 2026
About Ghent University, Belgium – Official Website
Ghent University is a public research university located in Ghent, Belgium. It was established in 1817 by King William I of the Netherlands. After the Belgian revolution of 1830, the newly formed Belgian state began to administer the university. In 1930, the university became the first Dutch-speaking university in Belgium, whereas French had previously been the standard academic language in what was Université de Gand. In 1991, it was granted major autonomy and changed its name accordingly from State University of Ghent (Dutch: Rijksuniversiteit Gent, abbreviated as RUG) to its current designation.
In contrast to the Catholic University of Leuven or the Free University of Brussels, UGent considers itself a pluralist university in a special sense, i.e. not connected to any particular religion or political ideology. Its motto Inter Utrumque (‘In Between Both Extremes’), on the coat of arms, suggests the acquisition of wisdom and science comes only in an atmosphere of peace, when the institution is fully supported by the monarchy and fatherland.
Ghent University is one of the biggest Flemish universities, consisting of 44,000 students and 9,000 staff members. The University also supports the University Library and the University Hospital, which is one of the largest hospitals in Belgium. It is one of the greatest beneficiaries of funding from the Research Foundation – Flanders (FWO). Ghent University consistently rates among the top 100 universities in the world.
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