Wageningen University & Research (WUR) is recruiting a full professor to chair the group of Sensory Science and Eating Behaviour, part of the division of Human Nutrition and Health. This position provides you the opportunity to further develop your own research line and your leadership profile. Together with other senior staff members, you are responsible for the academic and operational management of this chair group. You will define the research strategy, lead the team of scientists, lecturers and support staff, and further strengthen the national and international position of the group. You are also responsible for teaching and innovations in BSc, MSc and PhD courses, with the objective to contribute to the strong reputation and position of WUR in higher education.

Chair of Sensory Science and Eating Behaviour

The chair group Sensory Science and Eating Behaviour (SSEB) is positioned amidst the domains Human Nutrition, Food Technology and Consumer Behaviour. Sensory science functions as a bridge between consumer, food, eating behaviour, health and well-being. The main research challenge of the chair group SSEB is to better understand eating behaviour from a sensory, physiological and psychological perspective. The mission of the chair group is to "make the healthy and sustainable choice the preferred choice".

The SSEB group is part of the Division of Human Nutrition and Health (HNH) that is embedded in the Agrotechnology and Food Sciences Group. The HNH division houses a total of 180 part-time and fulltime employees including 90 PhDs and 20 postdocs. Expertise within the Division comprises nutrition at the cellular, the individual and the population level. The Chair of SSEB has an active role in the management of the Division of HNH together with the other four chair holders.

Research topics in the SSEB group at present focus on sensory perception, food properties, physiology and biopsychology of eating behaviour. The chair Professor is responsible for the group's BSc and MSc courses and their continuing development. This requires active participation in and coordination of courses, development of learning goals, initiation and development of new courses, and embracing new didactic methods such as distance learning.

The SSEB group currently consists of 28 persons, including 4 tenured and scientific staff members, 3 lecturers, 3 technicians, 16 PhD students, 1 endowed professor and 1 post doc.

The newly appointed Professor is expected to give new impulses to the research activities of the chair group and to extend the current research portfolio, as well as present the research field in society. The newly appointed Professor has the opportunity to fill an additional vacancy for an Assistant Professor (1.0 fte) to develop a new line of research to extend and strengthen the current research lines.

More information about current research and teaching of the group can be found at http://www.hne.wur.nl.

As full professor and Chair you are an inspiring and visionary leader, mentor and teacher. You are an ambitious and creative scientist with broad expertise in sensory science and eating behaviour, and you are recognised as a scientific leader in your specific field. You are committed to research and education and you seek to reach the highest level in these fields. You are an academic leader capable of heading a team in a synergistic, efficient, effective and motivating manner You are the figurehead of your group.

As a successful candidate, you

• are an excellent and innovative researcher with outstanding publications related to the field of sensory science and eating behaviour. You have a strong background in human nutrition, food sciences, sensory science, eating behaviour or related disciplines.
• have outstanding and demonstrable scientific expertise and a clear and inspiring vision on research and associated research methodologies.
• have a strong reputation and prominence related to the field of sensory science and eating behaviour, and are active in a wide international network of academic and societal organizations as well as the private sector.
• are successful in acquisition of research funding and strategic development of the chair group, and can demonstrate the potential to realize both in the future.
• can integrate new developments and build bridges between different areas to create new opportunities for research and education.
• are a supportive and inspiring coach who can and wants to develop the talents of the group's members, experienced and starting.
• have a clear vision on content of and didactic methods in education. You are an inspiring teacher who can innovate the existing BSc and MSc education programs so that they continue to reflect the state of the art in the field.
• are an open and outgoing colleague that can build and unify a team around the group's mission.
• are a team player willing to participate in active management of the division of Human Nutrition and Health. are a good communicator who feels the importance of dialogue in society, and who has the ability to represent and communicate scientific results and opinions at all required levels (internal, national, international, and in the media).
• have excellent management and communication skills, and the capacity and ambition to be influential in the establishment of strategies on institutional, national and international levels.
• an think well in scenarios, anticipating future developments and dealing with them flexibly.

You will be working for an inspiring international organisation with a large number of interdisciplinary projects all over the world. The scientific quality of Wageningen University is affirmed by the prominent position we occupy in international rankings and citation indexes. In agriculture we rank as the #1 university for quite some years and we also rank among the absolute top in ecology and environmental sciences.

We offer you a challenging position as Full Professor of the Chair of Sensory Science and Eating Behaviour. In addition to a competitive salary, we offer a number of additional benefits, such as an end-of-year extra month's salary, a holiday allowance and a pension plan with the Dutch pension fund for government and education.

A specialised staffing agency will help your partner to find a job.

Wageningen University and Research actively promotes gender equality and diversity.

Wageningen University & Research

The mission of our University is to explore the potential of nature to improve the quality of life. Nine specialised research institutes from the Wageningen Research Foundation and Wageningen University have joined forces to help answer the most important questions in the field of healthy food and living environment.

With approximately 30 locations, 6,500 employees, and 12,000 students, it is one of the leading organisations in its domain worldwide. A coordinated approach to problems and the cooperation between various disciplines are at the heart of the unique approach of Wageningen. We have been named Best Employer in Education category 2019-2020.

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