The PhD project will contribute towards the EU funded project i2CoRT (Interreg EMR program). This project partially funds this PhD aiming to develop solutions and methodologies for innovation in the area of rehabilitation technology. The project will be executed at the TU/e in collaboration with several partners in Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands.  This project will set up two clinical test environments, in the immediate vicinity of rehabilitation centres, where rehabilitation technology innovations can be developed and tested as to their effective and safe application in care.

The project will develop a small number of new rehabilitation technology projects to which the PhD candidate will contribute mostly towards interaction design, prototyping and evaluation. Specifically the PhD candidate will work on two applications a) wearable applications for supporting the monitoring of the use of the upper limbs of rehabilitating stroke patients through the day. b) augmenting wheelchairs to support the prevention of decubitus in wheelchair users.

The department of industrial design of the TU/e is looking to hire a candidate with expertise in Interaction design, with advanced capabilities in prototyping physical computing applications (using sensors, simple actuators, mobile apps), and physical prototyping (modelling, building, integrating computing technology in physical artefacts),

The candidate should be genuinely motivated to work in the domain of rehabilitation technology. Experience in the field of personal health monitoring solutions, wearable, assistive, and rehabilitation technologies will be very much valued. The candidate should demonstrate an affinity for working and designing with people, aspiring to combine an innovative hands-on approach with a scientific grounding and insight, and empathy towards patients.

The candidate should have (and will develop further in this project) strong professional and communication skills in order to work together with remote partners in a multi-national and multi-disciplinary research team.  The candidate should be fluent in spoken and written English; fluency in Dutch will weigh positively as the project will involve field-work with patients and domain experts.

Conditions of employment

a full-time temporary appointment for a period of 4 years, with an intermediate evaluation after 9 months;

a gross salary of  € 2.222 euro per month in the first year and increasing up to € 2.840 euro gross per month in the fourth year (PhD-salary scale Collective labor Agreement Dutch Universities) on a full-time basis, plus 8% holiday allowance and 8,3% end of the year allowance.

excellent employment conditions (including excellent sport facilities and child care).

starting date: ideally 1 June 2018, the latest by 1 October 2018.