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 main objective of the Stratus project is to investigate how drone motors can be designed and manufactured without the use of critical materials, while maintaining high performance in terms of power density and efficiency. Critical materials considered in this project include both rare-earth magnetic materials and copper. To address this, alternative solutions such as electrically excited systems, whether or not supported by ferrite materials, will be explored. Aluminum will be used for the windings as a substitute for copper.
In addition to the motor design itself, careful attention will be paid to ensuring that the proposed electric motor is suitable for mass manufacturing. The impact of manufacturing techniques must therefore be considered from the early design stages.
As a PhD student, you will contribute to the development of multiphysics (electromagnetic and thermal) models of electric motors. You will also assess and ensure the manufacturability of all motor components in a mass-production context. The work includes a substantial experimental component, including the construction of prototype motors and extensive motor testing. The project is carried out in collaboration with several industrial partners, focusing both on design & manufacturing aspects and on the drone application.
Deadline : Sep 30, 2026
(02) PhD Degree – Fully Funded
PhD position summary/title: Doctoral fellow
The IMVEP project focuses on multilevel inverters for applications with high DC bus voltages (up to 1200 V). The objective is to improve overall system efficiency (i.e., inverter + electric motor) and to increase the continuous power density of the electric motor. In addition, the possibility of eliminating sine-wave filters—typically required for conventional 2-level inverters—will be investigated.
Within this multi-partner project, EnSy will specifically focus on the T-type (3-level) inverter topology. The goal is to simulate, build, and experimentally validate an inverter for a 100 kW, 20,000 rpm motor.
As a PhD student, you will contribute to the simulation and modeling of the inverter and its integration with the electric motor. Following the modeling phase, you will design, build, and debug the inverter PCBs. You will also be responsible for implementing the control software on a rapid prototyping platform. In addition, you will develop a safe test setup and carry out experimental measurements on the inverter.
Deadline : Sep 30, 2026
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(03) PhD Degree – Fully Funded
PhD position summary/title: PhD Student
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
(04) PhD Degree – Fully Funded
PhD position summary/title: Doctoral fellow
This vacancy concerns a full-time, four year doctoral position in the Department of Translation, Interpreting and Communication (supervisors: Prof Brecht de Groote and Prof Bram Lambrecht), in close collaboration with the Department of Literary Studies (supervisor: Prof Marianne Van Remoortel) at Ghent University. As a doctoral researcher, you will have the opportunity to determine and delineate the specific topic of your project yourself, in consultation with the supervisory team. To ensure optimal alignment with existing expertise, your research proposal ideally engages with the following thematic orientations:
- it focuses on the Dutch- and English-language areas and studies these two contexts using methods from Translation Studies and/or Comparative Literary or Cultural Studies;
- it focuses on the genre of poetry;
- it adopts a historical perspective (ca. 1800–1950);
- it draws on recent insights from gender studies and/or queer studies/theory.
A flexible combination of these topics (according to your own interests and expertise) is encouraged. Your research will result in a dissertation written in either English or Dutch.
Deadline : Sep 01, 2026
(05) PhD Degree – Fully Funded
PhD position summary/title: Doctoral fellow
In the PhD program, the doctoral student will develop the next generation of operando X-ray thermometry tools, strongly moving beyond the capabilities of the group’s recently-developed X-ray absorption thermometry method. In addition, the student will explore novel optical laser-based methods to chart nanoscale heat transport within catalysts. Both pillars will require a strong component of catalyst fabrication, to tailor model catalysts via gas-phase deposition methods, including atomic layer deposition (ALD) and physical vapor deposition (PVD).
Deadline : Aug 31, 2026
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(06) PhD Degree – Fully Funded
PhD position summary/title: Doctoral fellow
Atomic layer deposition (ALD) is a key enabling technology for continued scaling in the semiconductor industry. As device dimensions shrink and architectures become increasingly three-dimensional, thin-film deposition requires atomic-scale thickness control and exceptional conformality. Modern semiconductor manufacturing operates at the 300 mm wafer scale, integrating billions of nanoscale devices on a single chip, placing ever-increasing demands on materials performance. ALD is widely used for fabricating critical nanoscale features such as gate dielectrics and metal interconnects.
A particularly promising development is area-selective deposition, in which material growth is restricted to predefined regions through chemical passivation of non‑growth surfaces, for example using gas‑phase inhibitor molecules. However, optimization of such passivation strategies is currently slow and largely manual. This project aims to accelerate and rationalize this process by exploiting the advanced in situ characterization capabilities available within the CoCooN research group.
Deadline : Aug 31, 2026
(07) PhD Degree – Fully Funded
PhD position summary/title: Doctoral fellow
- You will be doing research in the field of mechanics of materials
- You will collaborate with the involved companies in the research project
- You will communicate your research results on scientific conferences and in peer-reviewed journals.
Deadline : Aug 30, 2026
(08) PhD Degree – Fully Funded
PhD position summary/title: Doctoral fellow
At Ghent university, in the Department of Developmental, Personality and Social Psychology, we are looking for a full-time PhD student as part of an FWO-funded project: ‘MindBreath: A Synergistic Growth Mindsets and Resonant Breathing Intervention to Foster Stress Resilience in Adolescence’.
In recent years, stress-related symptoms such as anxiety and depression have surged among adolescents, raising urgent questions about how to better support adolescent mental well-being. The cognitive flexibility and heightened biological plasticity during adolescence offer a unique opportunity to foster adaptive changes and develop new skills that may help manage stress. This project proposes a novel mind–body intervention targeting both adolescents’ mindsets and cardiac vagal activity through slow-paced breathing as an effective approach to reducing stress-related symptoms via synergistic effects. We aim to conduct a randomized controlled trial comparing multiple conditions: mindsets-only, breathing-only, mindsets + breathing, and active control conditions. This study will comprehensively examine the psychological and physiological mechanisms underlying the effects of mindsets and slow-paced breathing, including cognitive beliefs, physiological responses (e.g., heart rate variability and baroreflex sensitivity), daily stress dynamics, and the downregulation of inflammatory activity. A multimethod approach will be used, consisting of questionnaires, physiological measures at rest and during a standardized laboratory assessment, and experience sampling assessments. Participants will be recruited via secondary schools, with a target sample of approximately 450 participants.
This project is a collaboration between the Department of Developmental, Personality, and Social Psychology (with Prof. Dr. Matteo Giletta and Dr. Nathalie Michels as supervisors; Phaselab) and the Department of Head and Skin (with Prof. Dr. Marie-Anne Vanderhasselt; Gheplab).
Deadline : Jul 05, 2026
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(09) PhD Degree – Fully Funded
PhD position summary/title: Doctoral fellow
As a PhD researcher within the THERMAGINE project, your primary goal will be to obtain a doctoral degree through original research on the thermally driven dynamics of magnetic nanostructures. You will focus on the experimental aspects of the project, using advanced NV microscopy to measure the magnetization dynamics of individual nanostructures. You will investigate how magnetic and structural properties determine the dynamics of nanoscale systems. The experiments will be closely connected to the numerical modelling within the project and will contribute to the design of novel structures with optimized behavior for medical applications.
- Perform NV microscopy measurements on individual magnetic nanostructures
- Prepare and characterize nanostructured samples for experimental measurements
- Analyze and interpret experimental data
- Develop and optimize experimental measurement protocols
- Work closely with researchers focusing on simulations and sample fabrication within the project
- Contribute to linking experimental results with theoretical models
- Present research results at international conferences and workshops
- Publish results in leading scientific journals
- Contribute to the collaborative and interdisciplinary research environment of the DyNaMat group
Deadline : Jul 01, 2026
(10) PhD Degree – Fully Funded
PhD position summary/title: Doctoral fellow
As a PhD researcher within the ERC-funded THERMAGINE project, your primary goal will be to obtain a doctoral degree through original research on the thermally driven dynamics of antiferromagnetic and heteromagnetic nanostructures. You will focus on the numerical and theoretical aspects of the project, using state-of-the-art GPU-accelerated micromagnetic simulations to investigate how magnetic and structural material properties determine the dynamics of nanoscale systems.
- Perform GPU-accelerated micromagnetic simulations of magnetic nanostructures
- Develop and implement numerical workflows for large-scale simulation studies
- Analyze simulation data and compare results with experimental measurements
- Contribute to the development and validation of theoretical and predictive models
- Work closely with experimental researchers within the project to guide sample design and interpretation
- Contribute to the state-of-the-art open-source simulation software mumax, developed within the group
- Present research results at international conferences and workshops
- Publish results in leading scientific journals
- Contribute to the collaborative and interdisciplinary research environment of the DyNaMat group
Deadline : Jul 01, 2026
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(11) 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.
Deadline : Jun 30, 2026
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(12) PhD Degree – Fully Funded
PhD position summary/title: Doctoral fellow
For our international interdisciplinary education team focused on the development of training programs for robot-assisted surgery, we are looking for a motivated research assistant. This is a full-time, one-year position that is renewable once (upon a favorable evaluation) for a maximum total period of four years. The ultimate goal of this trajectory is to obtain a PhD degree.
The candidate will work as a doctoral researcher at the facilities of Orsi Academy, Melle, Belgium. The researcher is expected to join an international interdisciplinary research team and, in collaboration with other PhD candidates and researchers with medical and engineering background, perform innovative research on the topic of Robot-assisted Surgery and Telesurgery Training.
Research Topic:
This project focuses on the development and validation of objective performance metrics for proficiency-based training in robotic surgery and telesurgery. Surgical procedures will be systematically deconstructed into surgical phases, key steps, critical errors, and performance metrics through international expert Delphi consensus and validation methods.
Building on this framework, surgical performance derived from video analysis, simulator data and telesurgical platforms will be quantified using structured metrics. These metrics will be translated into training models and curricula, enabling objective, proficiency-based progression and standardized skill acquisition.
The project aims to establish reliable, objective metrics and benchmarks for skill assessment and training progression, and to explore their application in real-time feedback systems and remote surgical environments.
In later stages, these structured datasets and metrics may also support the development and evaluation of computer vision models for automated performance assessment and feedback.
Ultimately, this research will contribute to the creation of scalable, data-driven training programs that enhance surgical performance, standardization and patient safety across robotic and telesurgical practice.
Deadline : Jun 30, 2026
(13) PhD Degree – Fully Funded
PhD position summary/title: Doctoral fellow
The Gut-Liver ImmunoPharmacology Unit, in collaboration with the Hepatology Research Unit, is seeking a highly motivated PhD student for an innovative translational research project focused on liver diseases. In this project, you will play a crucial role in further unraveling the pathogenesis of chronic liver disease. The ultimate goal of the research is to obtain a doctoral degree.
What You Will Do:
• Investigate the mechanisms underlying chronic liver diseases using human samples, animal models, and in vitro assays.
• Utilize a variety of techniques, including but not limited to:
o qRT-PCR
o ELISA
o Western blot
o Luminex
o Flow cytometry and FACS
o (Single cell) RNA-seq
Deadline : Jun 30, 2026
(14) PhD Degree – Fully Funded
PhD position summary/title: Doctoral fellow
- You will perform research on the fate and ecotoxicity of bio-based plant-defense elicitors, within the context of the project BioBoost (“Boosting plant defense against diseases and pests using biobased products), in collaboration with an interdisciplinary research consortium of UGent and KULeuven research groups
- This will include experimental work, such as environmental degradation tests (biodegradation, photodegradation), chemical analysis of transformation products, and ecotoxicity tests with aquatic and benthic organisms. It will also include, using the data generated, performing ecological risk assessments of these biobased products.
- It will also include coordinating day-to-day collaborative work with other PhD students and researchers of the consortium, as well as presenting the progress of your work at regular consortium meetings.
- As the ultimate goal of this fellowship is to obtain your PhD degree, you will also be expected to publish your results in peer-reviewed journals and disseminate your work at scientific conferences on a regular basis.
- It is also expected that you contribute up to 10% of your time to the teaching activities of our department, in courses related to your PhD subject, notably “Environmental Risk Assessment” and “Emerging topics and current practice in environmental risk assessment”.
Deadline : Jun 21, 2026
(15) PhD Degree – Fully Funded
PhD position summary/title: Doctoral fellow
- You will conduct scientific research with the final aim of obtaining a PhD degree within the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences. This research will be carried out within the research group of the Division of Paediatric Gastroenterology and Hepatology (Prof. Ruth De Bruyne) and the Hepatology Research Unit (Dr. Sander Lefere), both part of the Department of Internal Medicine and Paediatrics.
- Your research will focus on the validation of non-invasive diagnostic tools for the diagnosis and risk stratification of liver disease in children with obesity. To this end, you will prospectively recruit patients within paediatric departments, perform non-invasive liver assessments, systematically collect and analyse clinical data, and report research findings. You will also guide patients during liver MRI examinations and contribute to the analysis of imaging results.
- You will collaborate with several researchers within and outside the department, including close cooperation with a study nurse responsible for patient recruitment, and with paediatric departments in non-academic hospitals in West and East Flanders.
- You will supervise Master’s level students in the context of their Master’s thesis.
Deadline : Jun 15, 2026
(16) PhD Degree – Fully Funded
PhD position summary/title: Doctoral fellow
We are looking for a PhD candidate in the North Atlantic Current dynamics in past warm climates project.
In this project, you will develop and apply new tools to reconstruct ocean surface currents and contribute to one of the major challenges in oceanography: the stability of the meridional overturning circulation in the North Atlantic ocean, often referred to as the “AMOC”. This is a known tipping-point in the climate system, yet the behaviour of the surface currents in warmer-than-present climates remains largely unknown.
To gain insight into the position, strength and variability of the surface currents in the North Atlantic you will use a range of sediment-based tools and apply these to past warm climates (Miocene–Eocene). From these sediments you will extract organic microfossils (marine dinocysts) to study their species composition and biogeography and use this to reconstruct the position of ocean currents. In subsequent steps your task will be to establish the strength and variability of the surface currents using (for example) lipid-biomarker sea surface temperature reconstructions and, time-permitting, isotope geochemistry of dinoflagellate cysts.
Integrated with existing climate-model simulations, you will use these new lines of evidence to gain a unique mechanistic and dynamic understanding of the functioning of ocean currents in warm climates.
Deadline : Jun 09, 2026
(17) PhD Degree – Fully Funded
PhD position summary/title: Doctoral fellow
You will conduct a 4 years PhD trajectory within the SOYSAFE project, focusing on mycotoxin contamination in soy-based food products in the context of the protein transition towards more plant-based diets.
The research will investigate the behavior of mycotoxins during different processing steps (such as protein extraction, texturization, and production of plant-based (meat)alternatives), using advanced LC-MS/MS analytical methods and pilot testing. By performing exposure assessments using probabilistic modeling and Belgian consumption data, the impact on public health will be evaluated.
You will perform laboratory experiments, analyze and model data, collaborate with project partners (UGent, ILVO, Sciensano and FPS Public Health), and disseminate your results through scientific publications and presentations.
The ultimate goal of the research is to obtain a doctoral degree.
Deadline :Jun 01, 2026
(18) PhD Degree – Fully Funded
PhD position summary/title: Doctoral fellow
We have a vacancy for a fully-funded four-year position as a doctoral researcher on a project at the intersection of Romantic studies and literary, translation, and media studies. The project has been awarded to Prof Dr Brecht de Groote by the national funding agency FWO (Research Foundation Flanders, grant code: G084426N). Its full title is “Recovering the British-French Romantic Media Concept by Recomposing Transnational Impostures.” Ghent University serves as the host institution for the project.
The aim of the project is to study the national circulation and transnational (i.e. between Britain and France) exchanges of hoaxes, misinformation, disinformation and similar phenomena in the Romantic period. Working closely with the project’s supervisor, you will compile and analyse, through close reading and digital methods, a corpus of texts in order to examine how writers and translators identified, created and disseminated or thwarted potential misinformation as it spread across borders.
As a doctoral researcher, you will be working towards a doctoral dissertation and a doctoral degree, and you will be expected to present and publish your work in relevant national and international venues. You will also be expected to take on limited teaching and administrative or organisational duties. At least 80% of your of your assignment will be reserved for academic research in preparation of a doctoral dissertation.
Deadline : Jun 01, 2026
(19) PhD Degree – Fully Funded
PhD position summary/title: Doctoral fellow
The Hearing Technology Lab of iBME is recruiting a predoctoral researcher in engineering for the European Research Council-funded project InSilicoEars. This project aims to harness the unique properties of human auditory processing to develop a new generation of personalized audio solutions that perform robustly in complex, noisy environments. InSilicoEars integrates state-of-the-art machine learning approaches in audio signal processing, such as dCoNNear, with auditory neuroscience data from both normal and impaired hearing. The goal is to build a comprehensive suite of biophysical auditory system models that will drive the development of next-generation, personalized, and bio-inspired audio technologies.
Your role is to leverage biophysical auditory models within DNN-based closed-loop systems to develop novel machine-learning approaches for personalized and augmented hearing. You will refine these methods using available neuroscience data and conduct rigorous objective and technical evaluations, including benchmarking against relevant challenges. You will also optimize computational performance to enable real-time processing and develop hardware demonstrators. In addition, you will design and conduct sound perception and listening experiments with human participants to validate the proposed approaches. Supporting clinical studies to assess the effectiveness of these technologies will form an integral part of your responsibilities. Throughout these activities, you will collaborate closely with other members of the InSilicoEars team, including biomedical engineers and audiologists. The ultimate goal of your research is to obtain doctoral degree at the faculty of Engineering and Architecture from Ghent University.
Deadline : Jun 01, 2026
(20) PhD Degree – Fully Funded
PhD position summary/title: Doctoral fellow
- Scientific research in the field of Business Informatics to obtain a doctoral degree.
- Following the mandatory doctoral training programme.
- Valorisation of research results in the manufacturing industry.
- Providing support for teaching (a maximum of 4 hours/week).
Deadline : May 31, 2026
(21) PhD Degree – Fully Funded
PhD position summary/title: Doctoral fellow
Within this PhD, you will develop and apply state-of-the-art sensing methodologies, including spectroscopic techniques (e.g. NIR, Raman, or hyperspectral imaging), combined with machine learning and chemometric modelling to monitor and control polymer recycling processes. The research will be carried out in close collaboration with your promotors, other LCPE colleagues and industrial partners, ensuring. 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.
The position is offered in the Laboratory for Circular Process Engineering on the Kortrijk campus, under the supervision of Prof. Pieter Nachtergaele and Prof. Steven De Meester. The work will take place within a young and dynamic team of about 22 PhD students, 3 postdocs, and 4 technicians, focusing on improved chemical engineering for the circular economy, with an emphasis on pretreatment and downstream processing. This is important, as it is clear that waste is heterogeneous and mechanical and chemical recycling technologies are often highly sensitive to certain contaminants. Prof. De Meester and Prof. Nachtergaele have strong ties to industry and a deep understanding of the waste management landscape. The group applies fundamental science to the processes used in waste treatment facilities, while also introducing more innovative approaches.
Deadline : May 31, 2026
(22) PhD Degree – Fully Funded
PhD position summary/title: Doctoral fellow
The Sustainable Systems Engineering (STEN) group of Ghent University welcomes a candidate for a full time PhD position on sustainability assessment and value chain optimisation of novel cellulose-based flexible packaging materials, within the framework of an EU-funded project.
The project addresses the urgent need to replace conventional fossil-based flexible packaging with sustainable, bio-based alternatives. At the heart of the project is the development of regenerated cellulose films produced using novel enzymatic processes and the integration of artificial intelligence, machine learning, and digital twin technologies across the entire value chain. As part of a large international consortium, Ghent University leads the value chain assessment work package, tasked with evaluating the environmental sustainability, economic feasibility, and circularity of the developed packaging solutions, and with embedding these assessments within the technology’s digital twin.
As a PhD researcher, you will support the project’s Value Chain Assessment, which sits at the intersection of sustainability science, process engineering, and AI-powered decision support. You will work in close collaboration with your promotors, other STEN colleagues and partners of the project consortium. The work covers three interconnected research tasks:
- Scenario development & process modelling: You will define and model a set of representative value chain scenarios for the upscaled production of cellulose-based films, covering both open- and closed-loop systems. Rather than relying solely on conventional process simulation, you will explore and apply data-driven and machine learning-based modelling approaches to generate detailed mass and energy balances.
- Prospective LCA & circularity evaluation: You will conduct a prospective Life Cycle Assessment of the identified value chain scenarios, evaluating environmental impacts across production and end-of-life stages. In parallel, you will develop and apply circularity-assessment methodologies.
- Techno-economic assessment & multi-objective optimisation: You will perform a comprehensive TEA and conduct sensitivity analyses. You will develop a dedicated Python module for multi-objective optimisation integrated with the project’s digital twin platform.
Deadline : May 31, 2026
(23) PhD Degree – Fully Funded
PhD position summary/title: Doctoral fellow
The group of Prof. Desmet focuses on the discovery and design of enzymes that can be used for the conversion of renewable resources (plant biomass) into special sugars and derivatives. Two new doctoral candidates will be recruited for the EXPEDITION project (“On expedition in sequence space: computationally guided search for new phenotypes and evotypes in enzyme families”), funded by the Research Foundation – Flanders. One candidate will design and evaluate a computational pipeline for enzyme discovery, while the other will apply recently developed AI-based protein design tools to the study of enzyme evolution. In each case, enzymes will also be characterized in the lab to gather fundamental insights in sequence – function relationships. This project is a collaboration with prof. Nidetzky at TU Graz, where a research stay can also be organized.
The doctoral candidate will be expected to:
- Perform high-quality research;
- Report findings by publishing research articles and presenting at (inter)national conferences;
- Collaborate with academic and industrial partners;
- Support the research group by taking up administrative, organisational and/or educational responsibilities;
- The final objective of the research is to obtain a doctoral degree.
Deadline : May 24, 2026
(24) PhD Degree – Fully Funded
PhD position summary/title: Doctoral fellow
Our research team – Dynamic Design Lab – works on modelling, control and optimization for mechatronic systems, industrial robots and processes (https://dynamics.ugent.be). We are part of the department of Electromechanical, Systems and Metal Engineering within the Faculty of Engineering of Ghent University (www.ugent.be/ea/emsme/en).
We are seeking a highly motivated and talented PhD researcher in the field of system identification and modelling for mechanical/mechatronic systems. You will work on a strategic research project funded by Flanders Make (SBO CausAICA), in which we develop next-generation causal reasoning frameworks for explainable and trustworthy diagnosis of complex industrial systems. A central element of this research is hybrid modelling, which refers to the integration of physics-based system knowledge, experimental data, and probabilistic reasoning into a unified diagnostic framework. By combining first-principles understanding with data-driven learning and probabilistics, we aim to build models that are not only accurate, but also physically interpretable and uncertainty-aware.
The PhD project will focus on fault diagnosis and root-cause identification for a web-winding machine, serving as an industrially relevant case study. You will develop and validate causal models on real experimental and simulation data from mechatronic test setups.
You will work within the Flanders Make SBO project CausAICA, which aims to establish causal AI methodologies for industrial applications. Your task will be to start from in-house causal model based on hybrid models and explore extensions in an ensemble with other causal methods. You will benchmark your new system identification and modeling tools on real-world data, i.e. wind turbine, motors, winding machine lab setups; with respect to its ability to explain faulty behavior. In the past years our research group has accumulated critical expertise and laboratory infrastructure to support this PhD.
You will be responsible for
Deadline : May 24, 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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