GUTS: Growing Up Together in Society

Your PhD project is part of the larger consortium Growing Up Together in Society (GUTS) funded by a Gravitation grant from the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science, includes the collaboration of seven Dutch universities that together investigate how young people successfully navigate and grow up in our complex society.

The goal of this project is to understand how young people grow up in increasingly complex societies and make contributions to society: we will study individual neurobiological development in relation to educational processes, social networks, and societal norms, including antisocial behavior. We will use state-of-the-art designs and methodological advances to develop an integrative framework on self-regulation development and contributions to society that will have explanatory as well as predictive power across multiple domains of functioning in adolescence and early adulthood.

The proposal can be downloaded here.

About your role
As a PhD you are part of a subteam of the GUTS project that operates in Amsterdam, which has the unique aim to include 400 young participants (ages 10-12-years) that are at high risk of developing severe behavioral problems.

During your PhD you will mainly focus on the role of self-regulation in the development of antisocial behavior, combining forensic-, behavioral- and neuroscience. We will examine how high risk children deal with delay of gratification, and how this is linked to the development of antisocial behavior. You will study the development of this behavior and brain activity using an experimental task in combination with functional brain imaging (fMRI). During your PhD you will have the opportunity to:

• Study the role of self-regulation in antisocial behavior, combining forensic-, behavioral- and neuroscience;
• Set up the high risk antisocial cohort of 400 children in the age range between 10-12, together with the PIs, a postdoc and two other PhDs;
• Work on recruitment and data collection for the high-risk cohort, keeping close contact with the recruitment sites for the cohort;
• fMRI scanning of the high risk cohort, specifically the self-regulation tasks, for which you will receive specific training;
• Work closely together with the two other PhDs working on the high risk antisocial cohort, as well as with the other PhDs within GUTS;
• Work together with the work package on statistical analyses to analyze the data;
• Publish your findings in open access scientific journals;
• Actively participate in the communication with young people about their perspective on the study an relevant assessments, as well as the clinical and societal impact of your research findings.

We are looking for an enthusiastic, societal engaged researcher at the start of his/her career, with

• Affinity with the forensic you population;
• A research master in the field of cognitive neuroscience, medicine or behavioral sciences;
• The ability to function well both in a team as well as independently, and possess good communication skills;
• Proven experience with statistics and statistical software, such as SPSS, R and MPlus;
• Fluent in Dutch and English. Because of the target population and your active role in recruitment of the cohort, only Dutch speaking candidates can apply;
• Experience with fMRI scanning is a plus;
• It is important that you are flexibly available, including evenings and weekends, given that we accommodate the needs of our participants. It goes without saying that these working hours are compensated during the week, as we strongly value a healthy work-life balance.

• A contract for the duration of the project (4 years).
• Salary scale OIO: € 2.789 to € 3.536 gross with full-time employment (depending on education and experience).
• Besides a good basic salary you will receive 8.3% end of year bonus and 8% vacation allowance. Calculate your net salary here.
• Free and unlimited access to our online learning environment GoodHabitz.
• Pension accrual with the ABP, of which we pay 70% of the premium.
• (Partial) reimbursement of your public transport expenses. Do you prefer to come by bike? Then we have a good bicycle scheme.
• An active staff association and Jong Amsterdam UMC association, both of which organize fun (sports) activities and events.

Salary increase of 4% effective November 2023

Amsterdam UMC

You will work at the department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry & Psychosocial Care, Amsterdam UMC, within the Section Youth at Risk. Within the section Youth at Risk, we focus on children and adolescents at risk of displaying antisocial and delinquent behavior. We mainly operate within the field of Forensic Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. Our main aim is to study why some children and adolescents display antisocial or delinquent behavior, why most desist and some persist in that behavior, and what (preventive) interventions are needed to help youth at risk to develop into adults that function well in our complex modern society .

You will be appointed at Amsterdam UMC - VUmc, and your working location will be at location AMC, psychiatry building.