Your work environment

The Department of Psychiatry of the VU University Medical Center (VUmc) and GGZ inGeest collaboratively conduct research, education and academic patient care. The main focus is on depression and anxiety disorders, two common psychiatric disorders with high public health impact. Psychiatric research is embedded in two research institutes: Amsterdam Public Health and Amsterdam Neuroscience. In this research area more than 150 persons from different disciplines (e.g. psychiatry, psychology and health science) collaborate.

The Netherlands Study of Depression and Anxiety (NESDA; see www.nesda.nl) is an ongoing longitudinal cohort study into the risk factors and long-term course and consequences of depressive and anxiety disorders. The Department of Psychiatry has 2 PhD positions available based on the NESDA study. The first project aims at better understanding risk and resilience factors in the familial transmission of mood and anxiety disorders (Project 1). The second project aims at identifying the effects of anxiety and depression on healthy brain ageing and the identification of biopsychosocial risk and protective factors of depression and anxiety onon healthy brain ageing (Project 2). For more information about the project you can go to https://www.vumc.com/branch/Psychiatry/news/phdposition-psychiatry/ (Project 1) or https://www.vumc.com/branch/Psychiatry/news/phdposition-psychiatry2/ (Project 2)

Your challenge

As a PhD student your main tasks will be:

• Contribution to recruitment, data collection and cleaning for ongoing research projects
• Data analyses and manuscript writing of min. 5 scientific articles in international peer-reviewed journals
• Presentation of findings at (inter)national conferences

The end product for each PhD student is a PhD thesis based on high-quality internationally peer reviewed publications. Training in essential research skills is part of the appointment as a PhD student.

Your profile

• You are an enthusiastic and motivated researcher interested in either the familial transmission of anxiety and depression (project 1) or neurobiology of depression and anxiety and/or brain ageing (project 2)
• A completed (research) master in epidemiology, health science, neuroscience, psychology, or a closely related master
• You are ambitious, accurate and have a flexible working attitude, are well organized and can work independently, but are also a pleasant team player;
• Excellent communication skills in English (written and verbal);
• Affinity and experience with statistical (longitudinal) data-analysis (project 1&2; e.g., SPSS/R/Mplus), and (f)MRI neuroimaging analyses (project 2; e.g. FSL/SPM/freesurfer/unix);
• Demonstrable organization skills and experience with working in multi-disciplinary (inter)national project teams is a plus;
• An already published scientific article in a peer-reviewed journal is a plus.

We offer

Salary Scale OIO: 2279 tot 2919 euro gross when employed full-time (depending on qualifications and experience).

• Salary scale: OIO (2244 – 2874 euro based on a 36-hour week), depending on qualifications and experience;
• In addition to a good monthly salary we offer, among others, 8,3% extra allowance at the end of the year and 8% for holidays. For more information on our conditions, please visit www.werkenbijvumc.nl/arbeidsvoorwaarden (Dutch version with link to English collective labor agreement).

For Dutch citizens it is mandatory to provide a VOG (Verklaring Omtrent Gedrag).