Are you interested in making an inventory of the research expertise and knowledge needs of materials scientists in both academia and industry? Do you have a PhD in materials research and are you a good organizer and communicator? Do you also like to help coordinate international research programs? Then this project, funded by the National Science Agenda (NWA) might be what you are looking for.

Materials research plays a key role in the solution of key societal problems that our society faces today. Innovations in the energy transition and sustainability; agriculture, water and food; health and care; and safety all strongly depend on novel materials. In addition, materials play a crucial role in the development of key technologies that generate innovations that strengthen the Dutch industry. The Dutch materials ecosystem is very broad, and spans the range from universities, NWO institutes, universities of applied science, technology institutes, start-ups, scale-ups and large companies. To create maximum impact with this broad Dutch ecosystem it is important that all partners know about each other’s expertise and research needs. This will benefit collaboration, and help partners define joint research programs and together apply for funding programs.

You will make an inventory of the research expertise and knowledge needs of materials researchers active in industry and academia. In this way, you can strengthen interaction within what is called the Technology Readiness Level (TRL) chain. These are the tasks that you will fulfill:

• Develop an on‐line questionnaire to make an inventory of the materials research expertise each organization is offering or looking for.
• Reach out to all material researchers (> 250) that participated in the NWA Materials Workshops held in the past years, and to those involved in the Nationaal Groeifonds Application Duurzame MaterialenNL.
• Reach out to the > 40 Dutch materials startups.
• Reach out to materials partners that were not identified so far, including societal partners and the relevant Ministries.
• Publish an overview of expertise and research needs of all materials partners on the online platform of the materials community that is publicly available (https://materialennl-platform.nl).

This project is funded by the Nationale Wetenschapsagenda (NWA).

The position is intended as full-time (40 hours/week) appointment in the service of the Netherlands Foundation of Scientific Research Institutes (NWO-I) for the duration of one year. This position can also be combined with the function of Scientific secretary of the international eBEAM collaboration program at AMOLF (https://www.e-beam.eu) in which case the appointment can be extended with 3 years. Salary is in scale 10 of the CAO OI and AMOLF offers excellent secondary employment conditions.

Photonic Materials

You will be based in the Photonic Materials group, led by prof. Albert Polman, that is part of the Light Management in new Photovoltaics Materials (LMPV) research program in AMOLF’s Sustainable Energy Materials Department (see: www.erbium.nl; www.lmpv.nl).