Do you, as head of department, want to manage a team of professional, driven researchers and analysts? Supported by your leadership skills, they can make an optimal contribution to multidisciplinary research and consulting within the expertise of veterinary epidemiology, bioinformatics and animal studies. Read on and respond quickly!

Function
As Head of Epidemiology, Bioinformatics and Animal Studies, you will supervise and lead approximately 30 highly motivated researchers and analysts.

In this position you are a member of the Management Team of WBVR and you report directly to the director of WBVR. You are the point of contact for the clients in your field. As head of department you are jointly responsible for the departmental plan of the research departments, the quality of the research of the department, the planning and deployment of employees. In addition, you are responsible for developing and maintaining expertise for prospective product-market combinations. You are also responsible for the budget and you ensure sufficient connection with the Business Innovation Strategy department so that the work stock is continuously supervised and optimized.

• You have excellent leadership skills, preferably experience with integral management of a (part of a) research unit;
• You have an academic training in veterinary medicine or life sciences and a PhD in epidemiology, bioinformatics or animal studies;
• You preferably have experience with clinical (veterinary) or pre-clinical (human or veterinary) studies, infectious diseases and GCP (Good Clinical Practice);
• You also have experience with contract research;
• You have good analytical skills and at least 5 years of experience as a senior researcher;
• You have skills to work in a project organization;
• You have excellent social and communication skills; you are able to strongly empower the employees of the department, to stimulate mutual cooperation within the department and to initiate new collaborations internally and externally;
• You have excellent spoken and written command of the Dutch and English language;
• You have a hands-on mentality and strong analytical skills and the aim to continuously improve yourself and the organization;
• You have vision, decisiveness and pro-activity.

An inspiring and dynamic working environment with a modern benefits package. The salary indication depends on your work experience and background, you are classified in scale 13 or 14 in accordance with the CAO, a maximum of € 7,133 gross per month based on a full-time employment of 36 hours per week. Initially, this concerns a fixed-term employment of 1 year, with the option of extension and the option of permanent employment. The place of employment is Lelystad in the Netherlands.

We also offer:

• A holiday allowance of 8%;
• a fixed year-end bonus of 3%;
• excellent training opportunities and fringe benefits;
• an excellent pension scheme via ABP;
• 171 vacation hours, the opportunity to buy additional and good additional leave arrangements;
• a choice model to compile part of your employment conditions yourself, such as a bicycle plan or an addition to travel costs.

Wageningen University & Research stimulates internal career opportunities and mobility with an active internal recruitment policy. There are ample opportunities for personal initiatives in a learning environment.

Wageningen University & Research

The mission of Wageningen University & Research is "To explore the potential of nature to improve the quality of life". Within Wageningen University & Research, nine specialised research institutes from the Wageningen Research Foundation and Wageningen University have joined forces to help answer the most important questions in the domain of healthy food and living environment.

For further information about working at Wageningen University & Research, take a look at thespecial career site.

Wageningen University and Research has five Science Groups, one of which is the Animal Sciences Group (ASG). ASG's core activities are fundamental and applied scientific research, academic education and the development of (animal) production systems and innovations. Wageningen Bioveterinary Research (WBVR) is one of ASG's Business Units and employs approximately 250 people. The institute is a unique organization and conducts innovative research for the government and the business community in the field of animal and public health, such as vaccine development and diagnostic tests. Work is being done on animal and human health by preventing, combating and controlling animal diseases. WBVR is a financially healthy institute with ambitions.

Wageningen Bioveterinary Research combines fundamental and applied knowledge to find solutions to important questions in the field of animal health and infectious diseases.

Wageningen Bioveterinary Research (WBVR )'s mission is top level veterinary and biomedical research for animal and public health ". From this mission WBVR carries out projects for the Dutch and European governments as well as contract research assignments for a large number of national and international clients. WBVR focuses in particular on research into (notifiable) infectious diseases in animals and on infectious diseases that can pass from animals to humans (zoonoses).

The Epidemiology, Bioinformatics and Animal Studies department works as a project organization in which projects in the epidemiology group focus on, among others, the following topics:

• Developing surveillance systems for endemic and notifiable pathogens (including using big data);
• determining infection and transmission risks; disease prevalence and control strategies;
• developing and analyzing quantitative transmission models;
• performing qualitative and quantitative (import) risk analysis;
• analyzing outbreak data and epidemiological consultancy.

The team has broad expertise in population biology, epidemiology, veterinary medicine and mathematics. There is close collaboration with researchers from virology, bacteriology or diagnostics departments.

The bioinformatics group is responsible for the processing and analysis of large amounts of data that arise, for example, from metagenome and pathogen genome sequencing, host response and DNA or protein array applications. In this multidisciplinary field, we make use of integrated knowledge in the field of bioinformatics, Omics and evolution microbiology, whereby close collaboration with the pathogen specialists from within and outside WBVR is self-evident. Challenges include the valorization of the multidisciplinary work.

The animal study group focuses on developing animal models and conducting clinical or preclinical studies, in addition to setting up and testing animal-free alternatives. This group combines knowledge about the pathogen with veterinary, pathological and immunological knowledge, and works according to Good Clinical Practice (GCP). A significant part of the work consist of contract research activities for both veterinary and human biomedical companies.