In our team we have a vacancy for an Assistant Professor who is specialized in the cross/multi-disciplinary field of Humanitarian Engineering.

Ending poverty and promoting human development, in a socially inclusive and environmentally sustainable manner, is the greatest challenge of our era and the key priority in the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.

The world is facing challenges of increasing complexity. We believe integrated social-technical solutions are needed to properly tackle the Humanitarian Challenges in areas such as resilience, infrastructure and the environment. Problem solving in situations of serious structural or accidental resource limitations requires frugal engineers, serving immediate vital or fundamental human needs. Integrating social science with engineering ingenuity provides the basis to social-technical systems thinking, core to developing frugal innovation solutions for tackling global challenges at a local scale.

To solve these situations, that afflict more than 10% of the whole world population, in both developed and developing countries, it is necessary to train professionals able to bring effective solutions.

The University of Twente wants to create a team on Humanitarian Engineering (HE) with the aim to offer a MSc programme of 120 EC in 2024 and to spark new research lines on this domain. The programme results in HE academic professionals that can research, design, organize and manage structural or incidental interventions towards innovations to overcome resource limitations. Through structured problem analysis methods and explicit involvement of the stakeholders they use local contextual awareness to find and adapt technical solutions to suit local needs.

Due to the composition of our team, we prefer candidates with experience and affinity to tailoring technical solutions to fulfil needs of vulnerable communities in developed and developing countries. Candidates with expertise in education sciences/educational design are encouraged to apply!

The challenge

As an Assistant Professor you will:

• carry out innovative research and translate academic research results into engineering practice;
• be active in networks for acquiring research funding for junior researchers and have ambition and experience in working closely with companies and government agencies;
• take part in the teaching tasks for courses in our new master programme of humanitarian engineering and in the bachelor and master courses in industrial design and mechanical engineering.
• improve your home-based specific expertise and develop an interdisciplinary research line;
• publish papers in international refereed journals and coach junior researchers in doing so;
• supervising bachelor and master final-year assignments;
• contribute towards the supervision of junior researchers.

• You hold a PhD degree in relevant technical/business/social science field, or related disciple with a strong affiliation to Humanitarian Engineering Aspects;
• You have experience in, or affinity with, designing/integrating appropriate engineering solutions for water, energy, healthcare and infrastructure related-engineering problems;
• You have state-of-the art knowledge in the humanitarian engineering field;
• You have a passion for teaching and good coaching skills (BSc and MSc students);
• You possess good communication skills and an excellent command of English;
• You have a good publication record;
• You have proven capability in attracting external research money;
• You are willing to work in a team of academics that feels committed to teach students and to supervise junior researchers;
• You are capable of collaborating with consultants, humanitarian engineering experts, funding institutes/bodies and governments (both national as well as international) on recent developments;
• You demonstrate soft competencies, including developing and using tools for engaging.

• We offer a fulltime position for one year with the prospect of a permanent position after a positive evaluation.
• The starting salary, depending on experience, ranges between € 3.974,- to € 6.181,- gross per month (in accordance with the Collective Labour Agreement for Dutch Universities), based on the job profile Assistant Professor.
• We have a minimum of 29 leave days in case of fulltime employment based on a formal workweek of 38 hours.
• A fulltime employment in practice means 40 hours a week, therefore resulting in 96 extra leave hours on an annual basis.
• In addition, the University of Twente offers additional attractive employment conditions (8% holiday allowance, 8.3% end-of-year bonus, solid pension scheme, sabbatical leave, professional and personal development programs).
• If you are not qualified for teaching at universities yet, we will provide a program to get this qualification (University Teaching Qualification, UTQ).