The department of Neurosurgery offers a position as from October as PhD student artificial intelligence, 36 hours a week

Your Challenge
You contribute to research that is part of the programme ‘A personalized care path for brain tumor patients’.
As a PhD student you focus on the research project ‘Better informed shared decision-making for patients with brain tumors using artificial intelligence (AI) prediction’.

• You perform scientific research in the domains of AI, neuroimaging and neuropsychology.
• You work with partners to develop AI prediction models for individual brain tumor patients.
• You are involved in developing an eHealth dashboard.
• You present the results of the study in clear, unambiguous reports.
• You play an active role in all activities of the research team and collaborate with team members.
• You publish results in scientific journals.
• You present results at (international) conferences.

Your Professional Environment
You will be part of the research group of the department of Neurosurgery, which participates in the programme Highly Specialised Care & Research programme 2020-2024, funded by ZonMw (The Netherlands Organisation for Health Research and Development). 
The aim of this overall programme is to create a more personalized care path for brain tumor patients before, during and after neurosurgical or Gamma Knife treatment. To improve shared clinical decision making, more extensive and accurate information will be collected, and models will be developed to better predict oncological or functional outcomes (eg, cognitive skills, socio-professional functioning) after (radio)surgical treatment. 
Our programme has two overarching themes: Neuroimaging  (eg, fMRI, DTI) and Cognition. It includes six research projects that are strongly interrelated and whereby 6 PhD candicates will jointly focus on optimization of the balance between oncological and functional outcomes in the individual brain tumor patient, each from a different perspective. Main partners are Tilburg University and Technical University Eindhoven. In addition we are collaborating with several other national and international Universities and University Medical Centers.

Your Project
This project focuses on the application of AI techniques to identify complex relations between large numbers of predictor variables and cognitive outcomes after brain tumor surgery. The department of Neurosurgery has a large and unique database, consisting of longitudinally assessed cognitive test performance scores, as well as clinical variables, anatomical and MRI-based connectivity measures, and genetic information, from patients with gliomas and meningiomas who underwent tumor resection. Iterative processes of AI analyses that will be performed through machine learning on this dataset, ultimately expanding to up to data from 1500 patients, will result in a continuous update of models and improvement of their accuracy over the years. Individual predictions will be intuitively visualized with another class of AI techniques, to be integrated in a for patient and clinical team usable eHealth dashboard, that will be developed during the project. This project ultimately aims to improve pre-surgical shared decision-making and subsequent quality of life in patients with brain tumors.
The PhD student on this project will collaborate with the PhD student on the related ‘Personal goal identification’ project, for example by developing an eHealth dashboard together with experts that is usable by clinical team and patient. 
This PhD position will be jointly supervised by dr. Karin Gehring, neuropsychologist, department of Neurosurgery ETZ & department of Cognitive Neuropsychology TiU; dr. Geert-Jan Rutten, neurosurgeon, department of Neurosurgery ETZ; en prof. dr. Eric Postma, professor Artificial Intelligence, department of Cognitive science & Artificial intelligence, TiU.

• You have a (research) Master’s degree in a relevant area such as Artificial Intelligence, Data Science, Computer Science, Medical Informatics, Computational Cognitive Science, Computational Cognitive Neuroscience, or a related discipline.
• Have interest in and/or experience with deep learning (CNNs, GANs) and with Gaussian Process models.
• You have interest in and/or experience with analysis of neuroimaging data.
• You possess strong programming skills in Python, Tensorflow/Keras, Matlab, or otherwise.
• You have excellent analytical skills and are highly rigorous.
• You have good technical understanding of advanced statistics and quantitative methods.
• You have interest and/or experience with developing an eHealth tool.
• You are a fast learner, autonomous and creative.
• You are highly motivated, work hard and show dedication.
• You possess good communication skills and are able to work with different people.
• You are fluent in English, both spoken and written.

Fixed-term contract: 4 years.

The PhD candidate will be employed at Elisabeth-TweeSteden Hospital. We offer:

• A full-time (36 hours a week) agreement for 4 years with a trial period of 2 months. 
• Opportunities for additional education, deepening and broadening. Working at ETZ means working in an environment where development and vitality is stimulated.
• Salary according to function grouping in FWG 50 with a maximum gross salary, dependent on education and experience, of € 3.664,- on a fulltime basis of 36 hours a week.
• A broad package of attractive fringe benefits including an annual holiday allowance and an end-of-year bonus of 8.3%; travel compensation, optional system of additional terms of employment with among others an extensive bike plan.

ETZ (Elisabeth-TweeSteden Ziekenhuis)

Het ETZ (Elisabeth-TweeSteden Ziekenhuis) is een topklinisch opleidingsziekenhuis en traumacentrum. Met drie locaties in Tilburg en Waalwijk is ETZ hét ziekenhuis voor alle inwoners van de regio Midden-Brabant, maar ook (ver) daarbuiten.