Are you passionate about artificial intelligence, computer vision and health? We are seeking six PhD candidates for our new lab on AI for Medical Imaging (AIM lab), a research collaboration between the University of Amsterdam (the Netherlands) and the Inception Institute of Artificial Intelligence (United Arab Emirates). The research lab will be focused on medical image analysis by machine learning, covering active scientific topics of broad interest, including both methods and applications. Those topics range from low-level vision and data pre-processing tasks, to high-level image/video analysis tasks. From a technical perspective, we will be working on fundamental and relatively general deep learning models and algorithms, which will be applied to specific diseases, including but not limited to Alzheimer’s disease, cancer and cardiovascular diseases. In particular we are looking for PhD candidates on the following projects:

• Project A: Medical Image Denoising and Enhancement
• Project B: Multi-Task Learning for Medical Image Analysis and Data Mining
• Project C: Shape Analysis for Object Segmentation and Structure Analysis
• Project D: Early Diagnosis of Alzheimer’s Disease with Deep Neural Networks
• Project E: Cancer Diagnosis by Jointly Learning from Medical Images and Health Records
• Project F: Automated Report Generation from Radiology Images

What are you going to do?

You are going to carry out the AI for Medical Imaging research and development in one of the six projects mentioned above, as part of the AIM lab at the University of Amsterdam (UvA). There will also be regular visits to and interactions with researchers at the Inception Institute of Artificial Intelligence. At the UvA, you will be supervised by either prof. Snoek or prof. Worring, as well as an assistant professor we are currently hiring.

Your tasks will be to:

• apply and develop medical imaging and machine learning methods within the context of one of the six research projects;
• collaborate with other researchers within the lab and the Inception Institute of Artificial Intelligence;
• complete and defend a PhD thesis within the official appointment duration of four years;
• regularly present intermediate research results at international conferences and workshops, and publish them in proceedings and journals;
• assist in relevant teaching activities.

• A Master’s degree in Artificial Intelligence, Computer Science, or related field;
• a strong background in computer vision and machine learning;
• excellent programming skills, preferably in Python and C/C++;
• solid mathematics foundations, especially statistics, calculus and linear algebra;
• you are highly motivated and creative;
• strong communication, presentation and writing skills and excellent command of English.

Fixed-term contract: 4 years.

A temporary contract for 38 hours per week, preferably starting at 1 January 2020 for the duration of 48 months. Initial employment is 18 months and after a positive evaluation, the appointment will be extended further with 30 months and should lead to a dissertation (PhD thesis). You will get a customized Training and Supervision Plan, that will be evaluated every year.

The salary, depending on relevant experience before the beginning of the employment contract, will be €2,325 to €2,972 (scale P) gross per month, based on fulltime (38 hours a week), exclusive 8 % holiday allowance and 8,3% end-of-year bonus. A favorable tax agreement, the ‘30% ruling’, may apply to non-Dutch applicants. The Collective Labour Agreement of Dutch Universities is applicable.

Are you curious about our extensive package of secondary employment benefits like our excellent opportunities for study and development? Take a look here.

University of Amsterdam

With over 5,000 employees, 30,000 students and a budget of more than 600 million euros, the University of Amsterdam (UvA) is an intellectual hub within the Netherlands. Teaching and research at the UvA are conducted within seven faculties: Humanities, Social and Behavioural Sciences, Economics and Business, Law, Science, Medicine and Dentistry. Housed on four city campuses in or near the heart of Amsterdam, where disciplines come together and interact, the faculties have close links with thousands of researchers and hundreds of institutions at home and abroad.  

The UvA’s students and employees are independent thinkers, competent rebels who dare to question dogmas and aren’t satisfied with easy answers and standard solutions. To work at the UvA is to work in an independent, creative, innovative and international climate characterised by an open atmosphere and a genuine engagement with the city of Amsterdam and society.

Faculty of Science – Informatics Institute

The Faculty of Science has a student body of around 6,500, as well as 1,600 members of staff working in education, research or support services. Researchers and students at the Faculty of Science are fascinated by every aspect of how the world works, be it elementary particles, the birth of the universe or the functioning of the brain.

The AIM Lab is embedded in the Intelligent Sensory Information Systems Group, one of the larger groups within the Informatics Institute working on visual recognition and retrieval, headed by Prof. Cees Snoek. Each project will be done in collaboration with experts from the Inception Institute of Artificial Intelligence, headed by Prof. Ling Shao. The lab will be part of the Innovation Center for Artificial Intelligence, a Netherlands initiative focused on joint technology development between academia, industry and government in the area of artificial intelligence.