Are you fascinated by application of electromagnetics for healthcare? Are you eager to improve cancer treatment using advanced sensing technology? Within the project RADIATHE, we have vacancies for highly motivated PhD candidate. You will work on techniques to sense and control thermotherapy, as well as use MRI temperature measurements to validate and improve upon these. You will exploit modelling and experimentation to validate your findings, leading to a potential uptake for clinical testing and next to a certified medical product.

Job Description

In this project, you will work on a project aimed at developing a reliable and simple quality assurance (QA) system for head and neck (H&N) thermotherapy (TT) applicators. The main objective of this project is to quantitatively control the power deposition and heating delivered to a patient during a TT treatment. To achieve the goals, we will determine the optimal sensor technology for instant and dynamic 3D electric field measurements, integrate the sensing technology into patient anatomy mimicking setups. A user friendly interface and workflow will be developed for wider adoption. To validate the device, a new measurement strategy will be implemented at Erasmus MC based on MR-TT. Hence, while you will work on the electromagnetic sensing, there will be a close cooperation with the Radiotherapy group of Erasmus MC for validation. This project is conducted at TU/e but also partly at Sensius BV in Rotterdam, which ensures timely commercial uptake.

Work environment

The Center for Care & Cure Technologies Eindhoven (www.tue.nl/c3te) stands for a healthy population and excellence in healthcare. We conduct groundbreaking work, pushing boundaries and leading the way in research, education, and healthcare. We are practical people with a high level of expertise, working in collaborative and multidisciplinary settings to renew healthcare of today and public health of tomorrow.

The work will be carried out in the Electromagnetics for Care & Cure lab of the Electromagnetics group that conducts, amongst others, research in the field of thermotherapy, MRI-engineering, neurotechnology, and in/on body communication (www.tue.nl/em4c&c). Our lab is an informal and inspiring environment, consisting of permanent staff members, a group of PhD students and guest (associate) professors from clinics and industry. What drives us is that we share the common goal: use electromagnetics to make healthcare better!

RADIATHE project

Heating of tumors to a temperature of up to 43˚C, i.e. hyperthermia, significantly enhances radiotherapy and chemotherapy without adding extra toxicity to healthy tissue. The body, however, responds to the heating by a very efficient, but inhomogeneous, thermoregulation in tissues, especially in the tumor. Achieving the optimum temperature therefore is a challenge. At Erasmus MC in Rotterdam, unique MRI-hyperthermia devices have been developed for MRI temperature measurements during therapy. In this project, we will use these devices to develop and validate advanced electromagnetic and patient position sensing methods using video and electromagnetic sensing techniques. In addition, we will develop a streamlined plug-and-play quality assurance method for offline applicator validation. In context of control, working at TU/e in Eindhoven, you will be responsible for the real-time electromagnetic sensing as basis for advanced control. This requires knowledge on (or affinity with): electromagnetics and multiphysics simulations, as well as experimental skills for testing and clinically implementing the technology. We offer a vibrant, multi-disciplinary research group, and close cooperation with RF engineers at TU/e, and the manufacturer of the thermal therapy system (www.sensiusthermotherapy.com), as well as MRI physicists, medical doctors and technicians at Erasmus MC.

Ideal candidates will have/be:

• A master's degree (or an equivalent university degree) in Electrical Engineering, Applied Physics or equivalent, with excellent grades;
• A research-oriented attitude;
• Experience in, or affinity with, multiphysics and numerical modelling;
• Experience in microwave sensing technology using integrated circuit and optical techniques
• Solid coding skills, e.g. in Matlab, Python, or equivalent;
• Experience in, or affinity with, experimentation and clinical work;
• Ability to work in an interdisciplinary and multicultural team; interest in collaborating with clinical partners;
• 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 27 (min. €2,541 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.