You will design, implement and evaluate a software system that is capable of explaining personalised health statistics related to treatment options. Based on state-of-the-art techniques for this, from Natural Language Generation (NLG), Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Artificial Intelligence (AI), you will study how to explain individualised treatment information to patients via automatically generated textual and visual reports, for which a demonstration system will be developed and evaluated with doctors and patients. You will collaborate with communication researchers from TSHD, statisticians from TSB, and data scientists and epidemiologists at IKNL (where you are expected to also spend one day per week). Your findings will be reported in publications, which form the basis of your PhD thesis.

For the position we seek a candidate with a (research) master in a relevant area, including, but not limited to: computational linguistics, natural language processing, artificial intelligence, computational health informatics, (health) data science, medical informatics, computer science or computational communication science.

You are a motivated researcher who is comfortable with working in a multidisciplinary research team, has strong statistical and programming/scripting skills, and an excellent command of English. Knowledge of Dutch is an advantage, but not strictly necessary. Importantly, you are passionate about health care and are motivated to empower patients using digital tools.

Fixed-term contract: 1+3 years.

Tilburg University is rated among the top Dutch employers and offers very good fringe benefits (it is one of the best non-profit employers in the Netherlands), such as an options model for terms and conditions of employment and excellent reimbursement of moving expenses. The collective labor agreement of Tilburg University applies.

The selected candidate will start with a contract for one year, concluded by an evaluation. Upon a positive outcome of the first-year evaluation, the candidate will be offered an employment contract for the remaining three years. It is also possible to work 80% instead of fulltime.

The candidate will be hosted at TSHD (Tilburg) and is expected to work one day a week at IKNL (Eindhoven).

Researchers from outside the Netherlands may qualify for a tax-free allowance equal to 30% of their taxable salary. The university will apply for such an allowance on their behalf. The Faculty will provide assistance in finding suitable accommodation. The PhD candidates will be ranked in the Dutch university job ranking system (UFO) as a PhD-student (promovendus) with a starting fulltime salary of €2,266 gross per month in the first year (€31,600 on yearly basis), up to € 2.897 the fourth year. The selected candidate is expected to have written a PhD thesis, which may be based on articles, by the end of the contract.

Tilburg School of Humanities and Digital Sciences (TSHD) conducts scientific research and education in the fields of Communication and Information Sciences, Philosophy, Religious studies and Language and Culture studies. The School of Humanities features three departments, several research institutes and a faculty office. Each year around 275 students commence a Bachelor or (Pre) Master Program. The School has approximately 1300 students and 250 employees.

Tilburg School of Humanities and Digital Sciences