PhD project on ‘Decision support for a healthy lifestyle’ within the NWO KIC project ‘Healthy Living as a Service’

Project description
The goal of “Healthy Living as a Service” is to improve people’s lifestyle. To enable this users are supported by smart technologies which allow tracking of the own health status as well as environmental variables that might influence health. To support long lasting lifestyle changes the project will take an integrated approach including personal factors, the living environment, and the social context. Citizens from different areas of the Northern Netherlands (field labs), reasearchers, artists and industry are working in close collaboration within “Healthy Living as a Service”. Smart sensors and artificial intelligence (AI) used to monitor health and the living environment will support and motivate the users to make healthy choices and make lifestyle changes sustainable. Participants will become aware about the risks and benefits of using technology and data for health monitoring. This will enable them to make their own choices.

Within the Discrete Technology and Production Automation group at the Faculty of Science and engineering of the university of Groningen the decision support system that forms the backbone of this project will be developed. The decision support system is supposed to evaluate data from multiple wearables and nearables in real time and to derive the user state and health status from this data. This information will then be coupled to health advices and interventions that provide feedback to the user. The main challenge is to develop robust machine learning based algorithms that can quickly derive the necessary information from noisy, incomplete, real-world time series data.

We seek a PhD student who is interested in:

- developing machine learning based algorithms that derive the health status from time series data obtained with commercial wearables and nearables
- integrate measures to make the algorithms reliable in a real world scenario
- investigate how the system can continue working if participants decide not to use all sensors
- collaborate with other PhD students within the Healthy Living as a Service project and work together with a number of industrial partners in the Dutch med-tech industry
- complete the graduate courses offered by the Dutch Institute for Systems and Control (DISC, http://disc.tudelft.nl)

You have:

• Masters degree in, Artificial Intelligence, Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, or other equivalent degree programs from top universities
• strong academic credentials, written and spoken English proficiency
• strong knowledge in artificial intelligence, programming (Python and C++ or C) and mathematics for signal processing (e.g. Fourier and Wavelet Transformation, digital filters).

Fixed-term contract: 48 months.

We offer you in accordance with the Collective Labour Agreement for Dutch Universities:

- a salary of € 2,443 gross per month in the first year (salary scale PhD students Dutch Universities), up to a maximum of € 3,122 gross per month in the final year, based on a full-time position
- excluding a holiday allowance of 8% gross annual income and an 8.3% end-of-the-year allowance
- a PhD appointment for four years. The position requires residence in Groningen and must result in a PhD thesis within the 4-year contract period. A PhD training program is part of the agreement and the successful candidate will be enrolled in the Graduate School of Science. The successful candidate will first be offered a temporary position of one year with the option of renewal for another three years. Prolongation of the contract is contingent on sufficient progress in the first year to indicate that a successful completion of the PhD thesis within the next three years is to be expected.

The preferred starting date is 1 September 2022

Faculty of Science and Engineering

Since its foundation in 1614, the University of Groningen has enjoyed an international reputation as a dynamic and innovative centre of higher education offering high-quality teaching and research. Balanced study and career paths in a wide variety of disciplines encourage currently more than 36,000 students and researchers to develop their own individual talents. Belonging to the best research universities in Europe and the top 100 universities in the world (see our ranking: http://www.rug.nl/about-us/where-do-we-stand/rankings, the University of Groningen is truly an international place of knowledge.

Within the Faculty of Science and Engineering (FSE), the Engineering and Technology institute Groningen (ENTEG) conducts engineering science research and covers a broad area of mechanical engineering, control engineering, materials engineering, and (bio)-chemical engineering. The research unit Discrete Technology and Production Automation (DTPA) is focused on the dynamical modeling, analysis, mechatronics and control of complex electro-mechanical systems. The application areas include smart energy systems, mechatronic systems, robotic systems, as well as, multi-agent autonomous systems. For more information about the DTPA group please use the following link: http://www.rug.nl/research/discrete-technology-production-automation