Resistance to treatment and heterogeneity of patients' response to therapy are two huge challenges in anticancer treatment. Understanding why patients differentially respond to treatment and how intracellular signaling mediates tumor resistance to therapy is crucial to improve the way we can stratify cancer patients for optimal therapy (i.e. precision oncology). This project has the goal to achieve a mechanistic understanding of multi-drug actions to rationally define personalised combinatorial treatment.

In this project you will work in a multidisciplinary team to combine innovative microfluidics technology for functional perturbation screening, with advanced mathematical modelling of cellular pathways mediating drug response, to improve our understanding of drug response in individual patients. This will allow understanding resistance mechanisms and provide a rational approach to design personalized combinatorial treatment strategies.

You will be embedded in the Systems Biology for Oncology group and will work under the supervision of dr. Federica Eduati. The Systems Biology for Oncology group consists of a multidisciplinary and international team of researchers that study tumors as complex ecosystems composed of many interacting molecules and cells aimed at defining new types of effective biomarkers to improve precision oncology by taking a systems biology perspective. The group is part of the Department of Biomedical Engineering and the Institute for Complex Molecular Systems (ICMS) and has both a dry and a wet lab component.

This position is part of the EuroTech PhD program, and you will spend at least six months in Prof. Merten's group at EPFL - Laboratory of biomedical microfluidics (LBMM). The position will be focused on computational work to develop mathematical models (machine learning and mechanistic models) from transcriptomics and phenotypic data measured upon drug perturbations aimed at predicting patient's response to treatment. You will work in close collaboration with experimentalists from the Systems Biology for Oncology and the LBMM groups and with clinicians from the Catharina Hospital, and you will ideally be involved yourselves to some degree in data generation.

• A master's degree in Biomedical Engineering or similar.
• A research-oriented attitude.
• Experience in mathematical modeling and analysis of omics data. Affinity for experimental work is preferred.
• Ability to effectively communicate scientific ideas, foster collaboration and capability for independent thinking
• Ability to work in an interdisciplinary.
• Motivated to develop your teaching skills and coach students.
• Fluent in spoken and written English (C1 level).

A meaningful job in a dynamic and ambitious university, in an interdisciplinary setting and within an international network. You will work on a beautiful, green campus within walking distance of the central train station. In addition, we offer you:

• Full-time employment for four years, with an intermediate evaluation (go/no-go) after nine months. You will spend 10% of your employment on teaching tasks.
• Salary and benefits (such as a pension scheme, paid pregnancy and maternity leave, partially paid parental leave) in accordance with the Collective Labour Agreement for Dutch Universities, scale P (min. € 2.541,- and max. € 3.247,-)..
• A year-end bonus of 8.3% and annual vacation pay of 8%.
• High-quality training programs and other support to grow into a self-aware, autonomous scientific researcher. At TU/e we challenge you to take charge of your own learning process.
• An excellent technical infrastructure, on-campus children's day care and sports facilities.
• An allowance for commuting, working from home and internet costs.
• A Staff Immigration Team and a tax compensation scheme (the 30% facility) for international candidates.