Are you holding Master’s degree and looking for fully funded PhD positions? Utrecht University, Netherlands invites online application for multiple funded PhD Programs / fully funded PhD positions in various research areas.
Candidates interested in fully funded PhD positions can check the details and may apply as soon as possible. Interested and eligible applicants may submit their online application for PhD programs via the University’s Online Application Portal.
1. Fully Funded PhD Position in dynamic LCA of bio-based products and circularity
Summary of PhD Program:
The life cycle assessment of bio-based systems faces several methodological challenges. Assessing the spatiotemporal-explicit and non-linear impacts of bio-based systems requires developing a new type of life cycle inventory, that is dynamic in nature. In addition, the existing life cycle metrics and life cycle thinking in general do not align in a direct way with the circularity of bio-based products, as the focus of life cycle frameworks is to quantify the potential impacts of product systems over their entire life cycles and not necessarily to account for product reuse, sharing strategies or material upcycling. Therefore, new methods are needed for capturing the potential added value created by cascading use of bio-based resources while taking the dynamic nature of bio-based systems into account.
Application Deadline: 9 October 2023
2. Fully Funded PhD Position in land use and environmental impacts of biobased products
Summary of PhD Program:
The large majority of the environmental impacts of bio-based products are related to land use and land management changes resulting from feedstock production and extraction. Impacts of land-use change highly depend on the biophysical context and are therefore location specific, temporally dynamic, and non-linear. The current statical LCA methods cannot capture the dynamic and non-linear impacts from land use. There is therefore a need to incorporate spatial and temporal variability of environmental impacts into existing LCA methodology.
Application Deadline: 9 October 2023
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3. Fully Funded PhD Position in Modeling of Plant Resilience to Temperature and Drought Stress
Summary of PhD Program:
This PhD position is part of a project within CropXR’s core research programme. For this project we are looking for an enthusiastic PhD candidate to develop dynamical, process-driven computational models for the effects of combined temperature and drought stress on plant growth and performance as part of the CropXR consortium. You will develop state of the art functional-structural plant models simulating plant growth dynamics and incorporate into these the molecular signalling networks linking drought and temperature perception to responses in plant physiology, growth and development. To arrive at the relevant molecular signalling network submodels you will intensively interact with experimentalists and machine learning experts.
Application Deadline: 2 October 2023
4. Fully Funded PhD Position in Cost-Benefit Analysis of Climate Mitigation and Adaptation
Summary of PhD Program:
Climate change is among the biggest challenges of the 21st century. Systematic analysis of impacts and climate policy in the form of adaptation and mitigation can help policymakers to evaluate effective climate policy. The ACCREU project external link, financed by the Horizon Europe research programme of the European Union investigates the analysis of climate impacts and options for adaptation. As part of this project, Utrecht University collaborated with other European research institutes in assessing climate impacts and options for adaptation. The research will lead to estimates of overall costs that can be used in cost-benefit analysis.
Application Deadline: 8 October 2023
5. Fully Funded PhD Position in social lives and cooperative abilities of Rüppell’s vultures
Summary of PhD Program:
Social life has been suggested as one of the main drivers for the evolution of intelligence. Comparative social cognition studies have, however, so far only focused on a select group of species, and little work has been done on vultures, even though they have relatively large brains and are also extremely long-lived. In a small team, we will focus on the social dynamics and social relations of Rüppell’s vultures, with a particular interest in their cooperative and prosocial tendencies, be it at the nest or in their social groups. You will focus primarily on studying 2 groups of Rüppell’s vultures (with a total of ± 27 animals) at Avifauna bird zoo external link and Diergaarde Blijdorp/ Rotterdam Zoo external link, both in the Netherlands There is potential to study other groups at other institutes as well as other, solitary, vulture species in the same and/or different institutes.
Application Deadline: 1 October 2023
6. Fully Funded PhD Position in Track and Trace
Summary of PhD Program:
Your main task will be to develop a new, objective method using our new technology to recognise patterns. Once we have subdivided the landscape into meaningful parts with coherent behavior, we can construct detailed sediment budgets of estuaries and tidal basins and determine sediment pathways from measurements and ongoing modelling. With this, we will gain understanding in systems functioning and effects of biota, extreme events, sea-level rise and human interference. Several ideas, methods and concepts for automated recognition of channels and bars are already available and are also developed by other researchers in our project. Your outcomes will be used by other PhD candidates, for example in model validation.
Application Deadline: 13 October 2023
7. Fully Funded PhD Position in industrial energy transition
Summary of PhD Program:
We are seeking a highly motivated and talented PhD candidate to join our team, investigating how low-value biomass residues can be used to provide clean bioenergy for industrial applications. You will be part of the Horizon Europe CBE4I project, which investigates a novel fuel-flexible, highly efficient and close-to-zero emission combined biomass gasification and combustion technology for industrial applications. Many industrial applications require medium-to-high temperature heat, which cannot easily be supplied through renewable electricity, and as such, this technology provides a solution for otherwise hard-to-abate emissions.
Application Deadline: 30 September 2023
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8. 03 Fully Funded PhD Position in AI for the Life Sciences
Summary of PhD Program:
In this project you will develop methodology to understand the interactions between plant root systems and their associated microbiome. The project aims to investigate the fundamental principles underlying complex microbial community assembly on plant roots and therefore provide knowledge that can be used to improve growth and stress resilience of our crops. Your work will involve analysing complex synthetic communities with diverse microorganisms sourced from different plants. These communities exhibit various functional properties, influencing plant phenotypic outcomes.
Application Deadline: 2 October 2023
9. Fully Funded PhD Position in novel approaches to eradicate mobile genetic elements encoding antimicrobial resistance
Summary of PhD Program:
Your project will be of utmost importance as the emergence and spread of AMR amongst pathogenic bacteria are a growing global threat. It is estimated to result in 10 million deaths every year by 2050 and reduce Gross Domestic Product by 3.5%. Unfortunately, only a few new antimicrobial agents are currently in the development pipeline. This lack of effective antimicrobial treatment leaves us all vulnerable even to the simplest bacterial infections. As a result, the World Health Organization has adopted a global action plan on AMR, prioritising bacterial pathogens on demand for novel and effective treatment options.
Application Deadline: 13 September 2023
10. Fully Funded PhD Position in Global river morphology classification
Summary of PhD Program:
While the controls on river morphology and patterns have been extensively studied, the global distribution of river morphologies remains unmapped. Recent advancements in automated mapping and quantitative analysis of satellite data now enable us to pursue this research goal. The main objectives of this project are to characterise river patterns, investigate potential causal factors, and quantify these findings on a global scale.
Application Deadline: 30 September 2023
11. Fully Funded PhD Position in Prevention of Occupational Diseases
Summary of PhD Program:
A future where people no longer get sick due to exposures in their workplace. As PhD candidate or Postdoctoral researcher, you can contribute to this aim with your research. You will work towards a healthy future together with committed and knowledgeable colleagues, and you will have ample opportunities to take the initiative to give substance to the research projects. For the research programme of the new Dutch national expertise centre for occupational diseases (LEXCES external link) we are looking for two to three researchers to strengthen our team.
Application Deadline: 31 October 2023
12. Fully Funded PhD Position in Harnessing the Potato Soil Microbiome Potential for Crop Resilience
Summary of PhD Program:
This vacancy is part of the CropXR Potato programme. The PhD project aims to investigate the potential of the potato microbiome to improve growth and stress resilience of potato crop systems. In this PhD project you will work with microbiomes from a diverse set of 100 potato fields. You will analyse their microbial community profiles, and experimentally relate them to their effect on potato growth, development and stress resilience in the Netherlands Plant-Ecophenotyping Centre external link (NPEC) using robotized plant shoot and root architecture phenotyping technologies. Your research will inform the crop modelling projects in CropXR Potato.
Application Deadline: 15 September 2023
13. Fully Funded PhD Position in gravitational-wave astrophysics
Summary of PhD Program:
The Institute for Gravitational and Subatomic Physics (GRASP) at Utrecht University is looking for a highly motivated PhD candidate in gravitational-wave astrophysics. As the successful candidate, you will work with real and simulated gravitational wave data from existing detectors as well as envisaged next-generation observatories such as Einstein Telescope, use statistical tools such as Bayesian analysis to assess what the challenges will be, and develop novel methodology to analyse the data accurately. With the developed methods, you will likely be placing much more stringent bounds on fundamental constraints from third-generation detectors. You will join the international Einstein Telescope Collaboration external link as well as the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA Collaboration external link, and are expected to participate in analysing data as part of the latter.
Application Deadline: 14 September 2023
14. Fully Funded PhD Position in Governance for more resilient landscapes in Dutch sandy soils
Summary of PhD Program:
RESHAPE external link is a new interdisciplinary research programme funded by NWO that aims to develop change pathways to increase the resilience of Dutch sand landscapes in the face of ongoing climate change. Think of droughts, floods, biodiversity loss and deteriorating water quality. The water system of the sandy area goes far beyond the visible ditches, puddles and rivers. It is above all the invisible water flows through soil and plants, that we can shift and improve. Moreover, in a resilient sand landscape, the spatial networks of water, economy, society and governance are strongly intertwined. Within RESHAPE we study how to stimulate these spatial dependencies, which can catalyze a change towards a future-proof sand landscape.
Application Deadline: 15 September 2023
15. Fully Funded PhD Position in Water-carbon-nutrient dynamics
Summary of PhD Program:
RESHAPE is a new interdisciplinary research programme funded by NWO that aims to develop change-pathways to increase the resilience of Dutch sand landscapes in face of ongoing climate change. It focuses on droughts, floods, biodiversity loss and deteriorating water quality. The water system of the sandy area goes far beyond the visible ditches and rivers. It is especially the invisible water flows through subsurface and plants that we can influence and improve. Moreover, in a resilient sand landscape, the spatial networks of water, economy, society and governance are strongly intertwined. Within RESHAPE we study how to stimulate these spatial dependencies, which often start with water and can catalyze a change towards a future-proof sand landscape.
