The number of people with type 2 diabetes is dramatically increasing worldwide. The most potent strategies to combat type 2 diabetes mellitus are increasing physical activity and restricting food intake. However, these are not easily achieved and additional strategies are needed. Cold exposure has recently received much interest as a potential therapy for obesity and diabetes, as it can increase energy metabolism and brown adipose tissue.

We recently showed that in patients with diabetes, cold acclimation not only increases energy expenditure, but also insulin sensitivity by more than 40%. We have strong indications that besides brown adipose tissue, also skeletal muscle is responsible for this improvement. These promising findings provide opportunities for novel treatment strategies for type 2 diabetes.

Therefore this project will focus on testing the effect of different temperature interventions for the treatment of type 2 diabetes. The goal will be the development of a cooling acclimation therapy aimed at increasing long-term insulin sensitivity.

The highly motivated candidate should be experienced and interested in organizing and performing small scaled human intervention studies with detailed phenotyping. The foreseen experiments will require skillful and frequent contact with the patients and with the PhD student and research assistant.

It is an advantage if the candidate is experienced with the insulin clamp techniques.

The candidate should have a Master in Biomedical Sciences, Health Sciences, Biology, or should be a Medical doctor, and has a PhD Degree in a related field.

Fixed-term contract: 3 years.

Your salary would be minimal € 2588  and  maximal €4084 gross per month (scale 10), based on education and experience.

The terms of employment of Maastricht University are set out in the Collective Labour Agreement of Dutch Universities (CAO). Furthermore, local UM provisions also apply.

For more information look at the website www.maastrichtuniversity.nl , Support/UM employees/Employment conditions.

Maastricht University

Maastricht University is renowned for its unique, innovative, problem-based learning system, which is characterized by a small-scale and student-oriented approach. Research at UM is characterized by a multidisciplinary and thematic approach, and is concentrated in research institutes and schools. Maastricht University has around 16,500 students and 4,000 employees. Reflecting the university's strong international profile, a fair amount of both students and staff are from abroad. The university hosts 6 faculties: Faculty of Health, Medicine and Life Sciences, Faculty of Law, School of Business and Economics, Faculty of Humanities and Sciences, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, Faculty of Psychology and Neuroscience.

NUTRIM School of Nutrition and Translational Research in Metabolism - Department of Human Biology

NUTRIM School of Nutrition and Translational Research in Metabolism initiates and catalyzes translational research into nutritional health benefits and risks focusing on metabolic and chronic inflammatory diseases. Through its research master and PhD programme NUTRIM aims to educate scientists of high academic excellence and ambassadors to support and develop the filed of nutrition, metabolism and toxicology within and outside the Netherlands. 16 Biomedical, clinical, and behavioural-science departments are incorporated within NUTRIM. The school is a partner in the national Top Institutes TI Food&Nutrition, TI-Pharma and the Centre for Translational Molecular Medicine (CTMM). These unique consortia of government, industry and research aim to stimulate the transfer of knowledge generated in fundamental research to Dutch industry and thus to strengthen its innovative power and competitive strength.