PhD position in artificial intelligence for open and accessible knowledge

Are you enthusiastic about creating innovative technical solutions combining knowledge graphs and machine learning? Do you want to apply them for solving complex global challenges requiring interconnection of data coming from different environments? If yes, this PhD position is an interesting opportunity for you!

The Wageningen Data Competence Centre (WDCC) is looking for a researcher to contribute and be a part of Horizon Europe SoilWise project.

SoilWise will provide an integrated and actionable access point to scattered and heterogeneous soil data and knowledge in Europe, making them FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable) and improve trust, willingness, and ability to share and re-use soil data and knowledge. An open, modular, scalable and extensible knowledge and data repository building on existing and new technologies will be provided while respecting data ownership, access policies and privacy. The SoilWise repository and community are designed to be a joint starting point and common ground for countries, the European Commission and other stakeholders to jointly guide soil and related spatial policy and informed decision-making towards the 2030 goals of the Green Deal, achieve healthy soils in 2050 and ensure broad uptake and implementation by land managers, policy, research and industry.

As a PhD candidate, you will specifically focus on creating and using artificial intelligence techniques to make soil data and knowledge actionable in the broader, crosssectoral and societal context. We will use semantic technologies to automatically extract knowledge insights from unstructured content, and you will be working on ontologies and knowledge graphs for the application domains. You also develop and apply Web and Semantic Web technologies, information retrieval, natural language processing, data analytics and machine learning techniques to link different data sources and datasets.

Your duties and responsibilities:

• participate in the SoilWise project and related developments, and work specifically on artificial intelligence approaches employing data of the soil domain and related data repositories.
• create and apply data science and artificial intelligence techniques such as for semantic annotation, interoperability and interlinking, knowledge graph construction and embedding, data enrichment, reasoning and decision making, FAIR data management.
• write scientific publications for leading international peer-reviewed journals and conferences in technology combined with the application domain of environmental and life sciences and other parts of a dissertation that lead to a PhD.
• create prototypes (in programming languages such as Python or Java) for data linking and analysis facilitating data reuse by other researchers.
• present your research within WUR, SoilWise consortium, and at (inter)national conferences and other forums.
• have a possibility to be involved in teaching and supervision of junior researchers.

You will work here
The research is embedded in the Wageningen Data Competence Centre (WDCC). You will be supervised by prof. dr. Anna Fensel of Wageningen University (Personal Chair in Artificial Intelligence and Data Science).

You have:

• a completed Master degree or an equivalent in computer science, data science or another related field;
• an affinity with the subjects of knowledge and data management, data analysis and sharing, as well as environment and life sciences;
• preferably, knowledge of Semantic Web technologies (such as RDF/S, SPARQL, SHACL, relevant graph databases);
• good social and communication skills, both orally and in writing, in English (C1 level). Knowledge of Dutch and further languages is an advantage.

You are:

• enthusiastic, flexible and motivated to advance and contribute to the objectives of the SoilWise project;
• adept at collaborating with other disciplines and partners and are willing to take initiative;
• an independent and organized worker who can work under time pressure;
• an innovative thinker, consistently generating new solutions, ideas, and perspectives and you enjoy approaching complex issues from different angles.

Wageningen University & Research offers excellent terms of employment. A few highlights from our Collective Labour Agreement include:

• partially paid parental leave;
• working hours that can be discussed and arranged so that they allow for the best possible work-life balance;
• the option to accrue additional compensation / holiday hours by working more;
• there is a strong focus on vitality and you can make use of the sports facilities available on campus for a small fee;
• a fixed December bonus of 8.3%;
• excellent pension scheme.

In addition to these first-rate employee benefits, you will receive a fully funded PhD position and you will be offered a course program tailored to your needs and the research team.

The gross salary for the first year is € 2.770 - per month rising to € 3.539,- in the fourth year in according to the Collective Labour Agreements for Dutch Universities (CAO-NU) (scale P). This is based on a full-time working week of 38 hours. We offer a temporary contract for 18 months which will be extended for the duration of the project if you perform well.

There are plenty of options for personal initiative in a learning environment, and we provide excellent training opportunities. We are offering a unique position in an international environment with a pleasant and open working atmosphere.

You are going to work at the greenest and most innovative campus in Holland, and at a university that has been chosen as the “ Best University ” in the Netherlands for the 19th consecutive time.

Coming from abroad
Wageningen University & Research is the university and research centre for life sciences. The themes we deal with are relevant to everyone around the world and Wageningen, therefore, has a large international community and a lot to offer to international employees.

Our team of advisors on Dutch immigration procedures will help you with the visa application procedures for yourself and, if applicable, for your family.

Feeling welcome also has everything to do with being well informed. Wageningen University & Research's International Community page contains practical information about what we can do to support international employees and students coming to Wageningen. Furthermore, we can assist you with any additional advice and information about helping your partner to find a job, housing, schooling. For instance under the "30% rule", certain categories of international staff can receive tax exemption on approximately 30% of their gross salary.

Wageningen University & Research
The mission of Wageningen University & Research is “To explore the potential of nature to improve the quality of life”. Under the banner Wageningen University & Research, Wageningen University and the specialised research institutes of the Wageningen Research Foundation have joined forces in contributing to finding solutions to important questions in the domain of healthy food and living environment.

With its roughly 30 branches, 7,200 employees (6,400 fte) and 13,200 students and over 150.000 participants to WUR’s Life Long Learning, Wageningen University & Research is one of the leading organisations in its domain. The unique Wageningen approach lies in its integrated approach to issues and the collaboration between different disciplines.. An integrated approach to problems and the cooperation between various disciplines are at the heart of Wageningen’s unique approach. WUR has been named Best Employer in the Education category for 2019-2020.

These are the points our employees list as good reasons to come work at WUR: read the 5 reasons to come work at WUR

We will recruit for the vacancy ourselves, so no employment agencies please. However, sharing in your network is appreciated.