This
fully-funded, 4-year PhD research position is part of the project
"Don't Forget the Forgotten! Towards a Platform-Based Approach for Sustainable Employment of Workers with a Disability". This project, funded by the Dutch Research Council (NWO), addresses the challenge of limited sustainable employment opportunities for workers with disabilities (i.e., a healthy, productive, and meaningful career). By developing online platform cooperatives and algorithms for matching disabled workers and employers, you address this urgent challenge while contributing to broader societal issues such as labor market shortages, budget strains, and the energy transition.
PhD project This PhD project builds on the notion that existing matching algorithms and domain models insufficiently address the characteristics of workers with a disability. The project aims to develop novel knowledge representations (ontologies) that better capture these aspects. We will employ an empirical and participatory approach to elicit requirements for the knowledge representation frameworks via data collection from relevant stakeholders. The requirements are used to design a novel domain-specific ontology that mathematically captures relevant worker characteristics and their relations regarding employee competencies, interests, values, and vulnerabilities. The ontology is the basis for building a novel matching algorithm that emphasizes the inclusion of workers with a disability. A prototype implementation of the matching algorithm will be developed as a proof of concept that demonstrates how an inclusive algorithm fosters a better person-environment fit for workers with a disability and facilitates sustainable employment.
The prospective candidate is expected to: - Perform and publish high quality and internationally visible research, and be involved in teaching and student supervision to a limited extent.
- Study and address the challenges associated with modeling employee-employer characteristics;
- Develop a matching algorithm and software prototype that foster inclusion and person-environment fit for workers with a disability;
- Collaborate with societal partners;
- Work in a team with two other PhD researchers from the engineering and social sciences;
You will receive mentorship by an experienced, international team of senior scholars with expertise in online platforms, labor markets, and AI systems at work.