The Netherlands Heart Institute (NLHI) is looking for a Medical PhD-student in Clinical and Experimental Electrophysiology (1,0 FTE) “Noninvasive electrocardiographic imaging for individuals at risk for apparently idiopathic ventricular fibrillation”.

Host Department
The Departments of Cardiology of UMC Utrecht and Maastricht UMC+ - partners of NLHI - offer a position for a medical PhD candidate. This 3-year position is part of the VIGILANCE consortium which is funded by the Dutch ‘Hartstichting’.

Project
The VIGILANCE consortium includes world-leading experts in the fields of cardiac electrophysiology, arrhythmogenesis, genetic cardiology, cardiovascular radiology and sudden cardiac arrest, and started in December 2017 together with Maastricht University Medical Center+ and Academic Medical Center Amsterdam. The VIGILANCE project focuses on establishing a Dutch national registry of patients with idiopathic ventricular fibrillation, i.e., individuals in whom no obvious diagnosis to explain the lethal arrhythmia can (yet) be made and already made significant progress. Furthermore the VIGILANCE investigators will apply an advanced diagnostic flowchart combined with noninvasive electrocardiographic imaging (ECGI) to significantly improve the detection of arrhythmogenic substrates in patients with idiopathic VF. This technique combines noninvase electrocardiographic data with imaging data to explore the activation and repolarization of the heart. The medical PhD student will fill a position which combines the clinics with patient care and basic research focusing on ECG imaging.
More information about the VIGILANCE project is available.

Main tasks

• Coordination and expansion of the national registry of patients with idiopathic ventricular fibrillation as set up by the Vigilance study.
• Perform ECGI measurements in patients with idiopathic ventricular fibrillation.
• Perform analyses of the ECGI data to detect electrophysiological characteristics in patients with idiopathic ventricular fibrillation.
• Create a national ECGI network in different Dutch hospitals.

Needed skills
The candidate should have a medical degree with demonstrable affinity to cardiology-related research and a strong scientific curiosity and drive. Affinity with technical issues and programming is preferable. Fluent spoken and written English skills are required. We seek a highly motivated and pro-active scientist who can fulfill a pioneering role in this consortium. The candidate should be able to work independently but also as part of a team and have good communication skills. The candidate should have the skills to reach out to Cardiologists outside the VIGILANCE consortium to include patients into the VF database, also by locally performing ECG-imaging.

Fixed-term contract: 1-year, which will be extended for another 2 years when functioning appropriately.

Position and location
We offer a position for 1-year (36 hours working week), which will be extended for another 2 years when functioning appropriately. The candidate starts in September/October 2021. You will be supervised by Dr. Rutger Hassink (UMC Utrecht) and Prof. dr. Paul Volders (Maastricht UMC+). The PhD student will mainly operate from the UMC Utrecht and will work for a period of approximately 6 months at Maastricht UMC+ to learn the principles of ECG-imaging, while getting acquainted with the idiopathic VF database, within a team of researchers experienced with these topics. Your project is part of the VIGILANCE consortium. You will work closely together with groups at UMC Utrecht, Maastricht UMC+, Amsterdam UMC and other Dutch hospitals. You will be appointed at Netherlands Heart Institute.

Salary
The salary for a full-time appointment for a starting medical PhD student will be scale 10.2, maximum €3.196,- plus 8% holiday allowance and 8,3% year-end bonus. Pay- and benefit package according to the collective labour agreement of the university medical centers in the Netherlands (CAO UMC).

Netherlands Heart Institute

The Netherlands Heart Institute fosters excellent cardiovascular research on national and international level. We conduct basic science as well as clinical research. We aim to promote cooperation between university medical centres in the Netherlands and between scientists and the private sector.