You cannot apply for this job anymore (deadline was 14 Feb 2021).
Browse the current job offers or choose an item in the top navigation above.
Covid-19 comes with a range of symptoms – from a sore throat and the loss of taste to more serious ones like lung failure. But how can doctors predict how serious the disease will be when it first manifests?
To that end, the University of Twente is participating in a pan-European research program led by EPFL in Switzerland called Digipredict. The goal of the program is to develop a ‘digital twin’ that can detect serious complications in Covid-19 patients (and beyond), employing breakthrough technology in the fields of artificial intelligence, smart patches and organs-on-chips.
In this European multidisciplinary consortium, you will be working on the development of ‘physical avatars’ of patients by developing microfluidic organ-on-chip devices of the heart that integrate patient samples. By linking the data from these physical avatars with data from clinical measurements, we will generate an accurate picture of how the disease is progressing in a patient and how well chosen treatments are working.
We have an existing prototype of a fully stem cell-derived heart-on-chip with integrated vasculature for use in the project. You will primarily work on further development of this prototype in terms of microfluidic automation, parallelization and dynamic perfusion, but will also be expected to carry out biological experiments in which you will culture stem cell-derived tissues in the device and treat them with cytokines and drugs.
You will work as a PhD candidate at the Applied Stem Cell Technologies (AST) group within the Faculty of Science and Technology at the University of Twente in Enschede, the Netherlands. You will collaborate with the BIOS/Lab on a Chip group of the faculty of Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science, and will be supervised by Dr. Andries van der Meer and Prof. Albert van den Berg. Your first responsibility will be to carry out the research project, but you are also encouraged to acquire teaching experience. We support you to broaden your knowledge by joining international exchange programs, by participating in national and international conferences and workshops and by visiting industrial companies, research institutes, and universities worldwide.
You will be appointed on a fulltime position for four years, with a qualifier in the first year, within a very stimulating scientific environment. The university offers a dynamic ecosystem with enthusiastic colleagues. Salary and conditions are in accordance with the collective labor agreement for Dutch universities (CAO-VSNU).
About the department
The AST group belongs to the Faculty of Science and Technology. At AST, we believe that we can achieve amazing goals in the field of stem cell technologies and have a direct impact on healthcare. We work on the engineering of functional tissues from human stem cells, and we integrate them in microfluidic organs-on-chips to mimic the function of real human organs. To achieve our goals, we work on innovation of stem cell culture and differentiation, microfabrication, microfluidics, bioprinting and sensing technology.
We maken het je graag makkelijk, log in voor deze en andere handige functies: