The treatment of patients with brain tumors is all about finding the right balance between (aggressive) treatment of the tumor, while preserving healthy brain functionality. In this project, that is part of a larger project entitled “Picturing Predictions for Patients with Brain Tumors”, you will compare treatment strategies for patients with brain tumors between centers and their development over time. You will help improve treatment standards by identifying and comparing treatment variations present in current clinical practice. In order to develop sensible treatment standards, it is important to appreciate that every patient and every tumor is different. Therefore, detailed patient and disease characteristics need to be considered.

In this project you will investigate treatment strategies and corresponding outcomes with respect to detailed location information of the tumor. Your work continues on the picture project. Taking advantage of this uniquely large, annotated, dataset, you will be able to immediately start your work and (if circumstances dictate so) work on them remotely. You will collaborate with (international) experts from both the medical and web development fields to make these analyses accessible in an interactive web-application to allow clinicians to perform their own analyses and to apply the results in clinical practice.

Your main duties and responsibilities will include:

• Use (resection) probability maps to identify how treatment approaches vary between institutes develop over time for low- and high-grade glioma patients.
• Work together in a team of scientists, clinicians, web-developers and designers to make your research applicable to clinical practice.
• Help represent the user group (neurosurgeons and neuroradiologists) to ensure the developed web-application fits their needs.
• Writing scientific papers and a thesis about your findings.

We are looking for a highly motivated and enthusiastic PhD student with a strong interest in neuro-oncological, neuro-imaging and neuro-surgical fields. You are pro-active and precise, result oriented and care about the quality of your work, have excellent (written) communication skills, talents for organising, and work optimally when collaborating with others. You like to solve scientific problems and have an intrinsic motivation and capacity to continuously improve yourself.

We are seeking a PhD candidate who fits the following profile:

• A master degree in medicine, technical medicine or equivalent.
• Programming experience is a plus.
• Excellent scientific writing skills.

Fixed-term contract: 12 months.

Salary Scale PHD: 2495 tot 3196 euro gross when employed full-time (depending on qualifications and experience).

In addition we offer:

• Additional benefits include an 8.3% end-of-year bonus and 8% holiday pay.
• Pension is accrued at the ABP. VUmc contributes a large part of the premium (70%).
• In addition to excellent accessibility by public transport, we reimburse 75% of your OV travel costs (commuting costs).
• We also provide you with the opportunity to follow further training and development.

We offer an initial contract for 12 months that can be extended (after evaluation) for another 36 months.

For more information about our employment conditions, please visit our website.

For Dutch citizens it is mandatory to provide a VOG (Verklaring Omtrent Gedrag).

Amsterdam UMC, VUmc location

Working at Amsterdam UMC, VUmc location means working in an inspiring and professional environment where development is encouraged in every respect. We offer you ample opportunity for development, deepening and broadening, additional training and a place to grow!

Collaboration with 12 international hospitals

• You will work in close collaboration in a team of three PhD students (including the PhD of this vacancy) and a mutlidisciplinary team of supervisors including a neurosurgeon, neuroradiologist and experts in medical image analyses.
• This core team works in close collaboration with the web-development team of Active Collective to implement novel features in a web application.
• The neurosurgery department offers a dynamic environment where research and clincal practice are closely connected.
• We colaborate with 12 international hospitals that help with data collection and University College Londen and Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim that help with data processing and analyses.