The Department of Medical Informatics (Erasmus MC) and the Department of Medical Statistics and Bio-informatics (LUMC) are seeking two PhD students to perform cutting edge research in large-scale, patient level predictive modelling in Electronic Health Records (EHR). This research will be performed in close collaboration with the American Observational Health Data Sciences and Informatics (OHDSI) program which is a multi-stakeholder, interdisciplinary collaborative to bring out the value of health data through large-scale analytics (www.ohdsi.org), and the EU sponsored ROADMAP project (www.roadmap-alzheimer.org) which develops a framework for real world evidence in Alzheimer's disease.

The PhD students will be responsible for the development and application of novel methods and techniques to leverage the information contained in the EHR. Research of the first PhD student will be performed in feature selection, feature engineering methods, deep-learning, and other machine learning methods.

The second PhD student will focus on more traditional learning methods such as regression analysis, and will perform model validation studies.

Candidates must have a background in Biomedical Informatics, Bioinformatics, Computer Science, Data Analytics, or (Bio)Statistics. Interest in data mining, machine learning, regression analysis and programming is required. The candidates must be highly motivated, willing to learn and demonstrate initiative in assigned tasks. Good written and verbal communication skills are desired for this international project.

Being able to present a certificate of good conduct is a condition for the appointment

As a PhD you will have a temporary position of two years (full-time) with a possible extension to four years. The gross monthly salary amounts a maximum of € 4.152,- (scale 10), depending on your level of education and relevant experience and based on a full-time working week of 36 hours. The terms of employment are in accordance with the Collective Bargaining Agreement for University Medical Centers (CAO UMC).

Erasmus MC

A healthy population and excellence in healthcare through research and education. This is what Erasmus MC stands for. Conducting groundbreaking work, pushing boundaries and leading the way. In research, education, and healthcare. We are practical people with a high level of expertise, working hard to improve and renew the healthcare of today and the public health of tomorrow.

Our institutes are internationally at the forefront of Medical Informatics and Biostatistics and offer a dynamic, challenging, and cooperative research environment.

The Department of Medical Informatics is specialized in using routine healthcare data. Currently the department is coordinating and collaborating in several projects that aim at building EU and global wide linkage of databases. The Department of Medical Statistics at Leids Universitair Medisch Centrum (LUMC) combines expertise in Medical Statistics, Decision Sciences, Molecular Eepidemiology, Bio-Informatics and Data Management and includes prediction research as a key research topic. The advisors for these PhD students will include Dr. Peter Rijnbeek and Prof. Johan van der Lei (Erasmus MC), and Dr. David van Klaveren and Prof. Ewout Steyerberg (LUMC).]