Showing leadership in research ensuring coherence within and between various activities and projects at the Department, whilst exploring and initiating connections with the other chairs in the Department and with other departments of the OU.

Developing new research findings which are important for artificial intelligence, for instance by supervising a healthy number of Ph.D. students.

Having and maintaining a strong publication record in refereed journals.

Attracting new research funding (EU, science foundations, internal funds) and research opportunities.

Embedding the research expertise in the curriculum of the Master AI program currently under development, in close cooperation with the department staff and outside experts, for instance in the form of new courses on current and relevant topics.

Guiding students in their MSc. graduation research.

Addressing practitioner and stakeholder audiences through professional and popular publications and through public lectures.

Playing an active role in the societal debate on artificial intelligence.

Liaising with civil society, governments and research institutions concerning issues with regard to artificial intelligence and its consequences

Representation of the department of Computer Science (and AI), the faculty of Science, and the OU within and outside the institution.

Management tasks on behalf of the faculty/department. The successful candidate will be expected to take on leading roles in the Department or Faculty (e.g. Department Head, Program leader, Research coordinator, etc.)

Candidates must meet the following criteria:

A strong academic profile in artificial intelligence, as demonstrated by an excellent publication record in typical AI venues (including, but not limited to IJCAI, ECAI, ICML, ECML, NeurIPS, etc), successfully completed PhD project supervisions, and proven ability to attract external funding

A Ph.D.- degree in the field of artificial intelligence, Computer Science, or similar fields;

Proven management skills, with a willingness to take on leading roles in the Department;

A willingness to contribute to the research programmes of the OU;

An established record of successful (interdisciplinary) collaboration and an existing (international) network;

Excellent teaching skills, as demonstrated by positive course and/or program evaluations in previous functions;

Experience with the development of new academic teaching programmes in the field of artificial intelligence;

An ability to connect with researchers from different disciplines and inspire them to work in joint projects;

Strong interpersonal and communication skills;

Experience in (or willingness to get acquainted with) online teaching;

A command of the Dutch language or willingness to learn it;

In possession of the Basic qualification for academic teaching (BKO) from a Dutch university, an equivalent teaching qualification, or a willingness to obtain it.

The successful candidate will get a permanent contract after a maximum period of 5 years. The salary will be determined on the basis of your experience and qualifications but will be in accordance with the general salary scale H2 of the CAO-NU. An indication of the maximum gross salary is € 8371.-  per month, for a full-time appointment.

The OU provides good secondary benefits such as training, mobility, part-time employment and paid parental leave.

Open Universiteit

The Open Universiteit of the Netherlands
The Open Universiteit (OU) is the university in the Netherlands where students study part-time and follow online and activating education in bachelor and master degree programmes in seven fields of study. Characteristics of the education are openness, flexibility and quality. Enhancing the study success of students is an important point of focus. More than 15.000 students are studying at the OU and it has nearly 700 employees. The OU has a network of regional study centres in the Netherlands and in Belgium (Flanders) (https://www.ou.nl/studiecentra). The head office is situated in Heerlen.

State of the art technologies and educational insights are applied in bachelor and master programmes and courses as well as in projects and programmes with partners. Both nationally and internationally the OU plays a key role in the innovation of higher education. Education and research are closely interrelated which guarantees that the current state of science is applied in education. The OU invests in research in the various academic disciplines, as well as in research in the field of learning, teaching and technology.

Top rankings
For several consecutive years, the OU has achieved top positions in the lists of the fourteen Dutch universities in the National Students’ Survey, the Dutch university guide ‘Keuzegids Universiteiten’ (in which the ratings by students and experts of the bachelor studies of the fourteen universities are compared), and the Dutch university guide ‘Keuzegids Masters’. In addition all studies rank highly in the study-specific rankings of the universities. All ratings are available on the website (https://www.ou.nl/rankings).

Faculty of Science

The faculty of Science is one of the six faculties of the OU of the Netherlands. Education, research and valorisation are the main tasks. The faculty offers academic bachelor and master programmes in the fields of Computer Science, Information Science, Environmental Sciences, and an Artificial Intelligence master program is currently under development. The faculty’s research program focuses on Innovating for Resilience. Furthermore, the faculty is partner in the Center for Actionable Research of the OU (CAROU). The faculty has Ph.D.-students who conduct research on various current topics within the research program. As a result of the interdisciplinary focus on education and research, as well as the close link with practice, work at our faculty provides many innovative and challenging opportunities for entrepreneurial researchers.

Department of Computer Science
The Department of Computer Science is an enthusiastic and ambitious group of approximately 35 people (29 fte) focussing on artificial intelligence, educational and learning technology, software quality, and security and privacy issues. The group contributes to these challenges through excellent research and online teaching programmes, covering a large diversity of topics, e.g. deep learning applications in industry, intelligent tutoring systems, privacy-aware technologies, reinforcement learning, e-health applications, Bayesian networks, cyber-security, automated software testing, and responsible AI. The department’s research lines are presented in the research strategy “Towards high quality and intelligent software” for 2020-2025. The online academic educational programmes of this Department have received the highest accolades in the country in this domain for years.