Are you an excellent, open-minded and team-spirited researcher that aspires a PhD? Do you want to get a unique international, interdisciplinary and inter-sectoral training in scientific and transferable skills, by distinguished leaders from academia and industry? Then this may be the ideal position for you!

The Landscape Architecture and Spatial Planning Group at Wageningen University in the Netherlands and Foster + Partners in United Kingdom is seeking an outstanding young researcher for the Solutions for Outdoor Climate Adaptation (SOLOCLIM) project. This is a European Industrial Doctorate (EID) project in the Innovative Training Networks (ITN) programme and part of Marie Sklodowska-Curie Actions funded by the European Commission within the Horizon 2020 program.

The aim of SOLOCLIM is to enable young researchers to generate solutions for urban outdoor environments and qualify them for a career in academia or industry. SOLOCLIM brings together three international academic institutions and four industry partners, aiming to investigate the three separate clusters of microclimatic interventions in the urban environment: vegetation-based interventions, solutions using water, and climate-responsive flexible systems. Alongside you, four other young researchers will work in this project and you will convene regularly. Read more about the SOLOCLIM project here.

Each young researcher will be trained both in the context of a company and a university. In the first six months of the project you will be introduced to scientific methods and write your research proposal at Wageningen University. Then you will move to the company Foster + Partners in London to conduct the research project in an industrial context. You will then move back to Wageningen University and finalize your PhD research for another eighteen months. You will be co-supervised by both partners, signing separate employment contracts with the university and the company.

As a mobile and early-stage researcher you have to fulfil the following conditions: you must have a degree that enables you to proceed with a PhD; you are in the first four years of your research career at the time of the recruitment; and you do not already have a doctoral degree.

Applicants of any nationalities are eligible and you must comply with the European Commission's Horizon 2020 Guidelines mobility rules. In particular, you must not have resided or carried out your main activity (work, studies, etc.) in the Netherlands for more than 12 months in the 3 years immediately prior to the recruitment date. Compulsory national service, short stays such as holidays, and time spent as part of a procedure for obtaining refugee status under the Geneva Convention are not considered. You must work exclusively for the project during the employment contract and fulfil the conditions to be admitted in the PhD programme indicated in the job vacancy. These conditions must be fulfilled at the starting date of the contract.

Furthermore, you must fulfil the following requirements to be considered in the application procedure:

• Required: Educated to Master degree level in urban simulation, urban ecology, urban or building physics, or similar.
• Desirable: Additional education or experience in architecture, landscape architecture, or urban design.
• Have relevant experience with BIM coordinated projects and landscape planning process
• In-depth knowledge of environmental modelling tools such as ENVI-met
• In-depth knowledge of fluid mechanics and CFD software preferably OpenFOAM
• MS Office and Adobe Creative Suite user
• Desirable to have experience with CAD platforms such as Rhino or AutoCAD
• Desirable to have coding experience (Python/Matlab, C# etc)
• Able to use a variety of media in the development and documentation of a design
• Demonstrate that you meet the English language requirements
• Have good academic writing and presentation skills
• Preferably have relevant industrial experience
• Have strong analytical and problem-solving skills
• Possess the ability to logically conceptualize, summarize and communicate research findings
• Possess the ability to work independently as well as part of a team
• Willingness to carry out PhD research in both academic and industrial environments
• Possess a high flexibility to work and live in two different countries and to move places several times
• Legally able to work in the Netherlands and the UK

Successful applicants will be offered a first six months contract from 1 April 2019 based on a full-time contract of 38 hours per week, and in the first six months during your contract at Wageningen University you will receive a monthly salary of € 2325,-. In the following two years when contracted at Foster + Partners you will receive a salary of £ 3466,-. In the last eighteen months when contracted in Wageningen University you will receive a salary of € 2835,-. In case you have a family, you will be offered a family allowance throughout the three years of your project. Please be aware that terms of employment differ between countries depending on national law.

Your contract will ensure transition between the university and the company you will be affiliated with.

In addition we offer (during your contract in Wageningen):

• a structural year-end bonus of 8.3%;
• 8% holiday allowance
• excellent training opportunities and secondary employment conditions;
• flexible working hours and holidays can possibly be determined in consultation so that an optimal balance between work and private life is possible;
• excellent pension plan through ABP;
• 232 vacation hours, the option to purchase extra and good supplementary leave schemes;
• a flexible working time: the possibility to work a maximum of 2 hours per week extra and thereby to build up extra leave;
• a choice model to put together part of your employment conditions yourself, such as a bicycle plan;
• a lively workplace where you can easily make contacts and where many activities are organized on the Wageningen Campus. A place where education, research and business are represented;
• use the sports facilities on campus

Wageningen University & Research

Wageningen University's mission is "To explore the potential of nature to improve the quality of life". With approximately 30 locations, 6,500 employees, and 10,000 students, it is one of the leading organisations in its domain worldwide. An integrated approach to problems and the cooperation between various disciplines are at the heart of the unique approach of Wageningen.

The Landscape Architecture and Spatial Planning Group at Wageningen University in which you will be embedded addresses present and future environmental challenges by means of planning and design. These challenges include climate mitigation and adaptation, sustainable water management, ecological networks, urbanisation, and the energy transition. Our specific competence is to analyse complex and dynamic landscape systems at various scale levels, and to propose inspiring and meaningful planning and design solutions. We consider it essential to base solutions on a thorough understanding of the nature of the landscape, so we have a strong emphasis on the analysis of landscape dynamics. Accordingly, we educate and train a growing numbers of Bachelor, Master and PhD students to become knowledgeable, reflective, and creative landscape architects and planners.

We are embedded in the department of Environmental Sciences of Wageningen University, which provides fundamental research and academic education on our living environment. We are member of the Wageningen Institute for Environment and Climate (WIMEK) Research school in which you will follow some courses that are part of your training programme.

Foster + Partners is a global studio for sustainable architecture, urbanism and design, founded by Norman Foster in 1967. Since then, he, and the team around him, have established an international practice with a worldwide reputation. With offices across the globe, they work as a single studio that is both ethnically and culturally diverse. Designing at the urban scale is a complex undertaking, whether it involves a masterplan for a city, a regeneration scheme for a neighbourhood, or planning a new public transport system. The team includes planners and spatial designers, economists and anthropologists, and landscape architects and mobility engineers, working together to create thriving and resilient environments. In this era of unprecedented social, technological, and environmental change, our approach anticipates the evolutionary changes and rapid transformations shaping our urban environments.

In the Specialist Modelling Group, the ethos is an appetite for enquiry, discovery and understanding. By maintaining a commitment to research - one of our great strengths as a practice - we are not only up-to-date with new developments and techniques but are also able to thoroughly evaluate their relevance and technical performance for individual projects. The Specialist Modelling Group helps design teams answer these challenges in the spirit of innovation.

Equal Opportunities Employer
We are an equal opportunities employer and welcome applications from all suitably qualified persons regardless of their race, sex, disability, religion/belief, sexual orientation or age. Furthermore, given our active policy to be as inclusive as possible as employer, we explicitly invite women and international candidates to apply. We believe that a diverse and inclusive workplace makes us a more relevant, more competitive, and more resilient organization.