Postdoctoral Fellowship (07) at University of Twente, Netherlands

Onto4Reuse is a service-oriented framework that supports the systematic reuse of standardised ontologies, bridging enterprise architecture and ontology-based software engineering. Rather than relying on individual expertise, the framework operationalises ontology reuse as an explicit architectural activity by guiding architects through the identification, selection, alignment, and modularization of (standardised) ontologies.

Central to the framework is the Architectural Ontology Recommendation Service, which leverages Enterprise Architecture models (e.g., ArchiMate and EIRA) to derive semantic requirements from stakeholders’ goals, requirements, business objects, and integration patterns. By orchestrating a set of interconnected services the framework provides traceable recommendations for reusable ontologies that are aligned with architectural decisions and enterprise objectives, ultimately promoting semantic interoperability in distributed systems.

The project “Onto4Reuse: Empowering IT Architects for interoperability challenges of distributed systems via reuse of standardised ontologies” aims to develop and integrate Onto4Reuse framework to support master students in addressing real-world challenges related to distributed systems, standards, and semantic interoperability.

Are you passionate about combining microfluidic technology, material science, device engineering, and cell therapeutic strategies towards real-world applications ? We offer an impactful postdoc position in the Leijten Laboratory within the Department of BioEngineering Technologies as part of a recently funded National consortium (NWO-Perspectief: RecovAir). In this consortium, we develop novel delivery methods for lung therapeutics by microfluidic devices, nanomaterials, pharmacological compounds, advanced in vitro models, and therapeutic cells. This approach represents a beyond-state-of-the-art solution to treat COPD.

How can we translate breakthroughs in wearable robotics from healthy users to people who need them most? Lower-limb exoskeletons have shown strong potential to improve mobility, yet key challenges remain in balance control and adaptation to pathological gait. In this position, you will develop novel estimation algorithms that enable exoskeletons to actively support walking in real-world environments in people with impaired gait due to neurological or neuromuscular disorders.

The interaction of hydrogen plasma with surfaces and thin films is rich in technological applications ranging from materials processing to extreme ultraviolet lithography and plasma catalysis. Despite its technological importance, mechanistic insight into the underlying processes of hydrogen uptake and diffusion in materials is largely lacking, partly due to limited sensitivity of many methods towards hydrogen. In this project, you will develop understanding of hydrogen uptake and transport under realistic test conditions using advanced in-situ monitoring methods. This project will involve collaboration with the Technical University Delft to study hydrogen uptake in materials with in-situ neutron reflectometry.

Your goal is to improve the understanding how plasma, radicals and ions interact with thin-film coatings, with the ultimate aim to predict and improve the lifetime of such coatings. You will design and prepare thin film model systems for measuring hydrogen uptake in materials in the context of EUV lithography, using facilities in the XUV Optics group. You will measure the uptake of hydrogen in these thin films using a newly developed measurement cell for in-situ neutron reflectometry during exposure to hydrogen radicals and/or plasma. The neutron reflectometry measurements will take place at TU Delft. Processing and analysing (fitting) the data will be a major task of the project. The obtained results will be compared with other techniques for measuring hydrogen uptake and diffusion of hydrogen in thin films.

Hydrogen plasma environments are becoming critical to several high-impact technologies, including fusion energy, plasma catalysis, and EUV lithography. In all of these fields, systems are being driven towards higher plasma powers, leading to more severe plasma-surface interactions and accelerated material degradation. Despite this growing need, current laboratory test facilities cannot yet reproduce hydrogen plasma exposure conditions at the intensity and timescales required for accelerated lifetime testing. Combining the concepts of different plasma sources should allow developing sources that expose samples to high flux of 10^16 ions/(cm2s) while maintaining the ion energy below 10 eV, exceeding flux of the current state-of-the-art ECR plasma sources. This innovation will enable lab-scale measurements of lifetime testing for plasma facing surfaces, while maintaining their corresponding degradation mechanisms.

In this postdoctoral project, you will work with different hydrogen plasma sources and develop analysis routines to characterize the flux and energy to verify the properties of the high flux hydrogen illumination source. You will quantify the enhancement, demonstrate the performance in samples relevant to applications, and identify the influence factors that allow to tune the source.

Are you passionate about creating next-generation robots that mimic the human neuromuscular system through muscle-like actuation, adaptive neural control, and human-inspired movement intelligence? Human-Inspired Musculoskeletal Robotics is poised to transform autonomous and assistive robotics, ranging from humanoids and quadrupeds to prosthetic limbs and wearable exoskeletons.