A sense of touch allows us to handle objects with fine motor skills and navigate the complexities of everyday life. Robots struggle with even simple tasks, because their sensing capabilities remain limited. It is incredibly hard to achieve the level of sophistication and high-density integration of sensing, signal processing, and movement that comes so naturally to us. This project, funded by an European Starting Grant, aims to develop a new class of chemical touch sensors that can be incorporated into robotic prototypes. 

In the Engineering and Technology Institute Groningen (ENTEG), we are looking for a talented and motivated PhD student for the development and evaluation of advanced electrode materials and cell component development for sustainable electrochemical water purification technologies.

In the Engineering and Technology Institute Groningen (ENTEG), we are looking for a talented and motivated PhD student for the development and evaluation of (electro)catalysts for electrochemical ammonia synthesis from sustainable sources in ceramic electrochemical reactors.

Are you interested in using data science to understand how digital measures can capture clinically meaningful aspects of reward, motivation and impulsivity? Do you want to develop and apply innovative digital proxies and combine them with neurobiological markers to advance precision medicine across mental and metabolic health conditions? Then this PhD position in an international pioneering project may be an excellent opportunity for you.

You will work in an interdisciplinary, international research project aiming to advance a transdiagnostic precision-medicine framework centred on Reward, Motivation and Impulsivity. The project brings together expertise in longitudinal research, biomarker discovery, clinical validation, data science, evidence synthesis and stakeholder engagement.

A central ambition is to move beyond disease-specific approaches by identifying biological, behavioural and digital markers that can help characterise clinically meaningful processes across different health conditions.

As a PhD candidate, you will contribute to this ambition by helping establish the evidence base for digital proxies, developing and applying data-driven measures, and investigating their relationships with neurobiological markers.

Are you a motivated early-career researcher with a strong interest in EEG, neurobiology, and precision medicine? Would you like to investigate how neurobiological markers related to reward, motivation, and impulsivity can contribute to a better understanding of health and disease?

We are looking for an enthusiastic PhD candidate to join an international, multidisciplinary research programme investigating reward, motivation, and impulsivity across major depressive disorder, Alzheimer’s disease, and obesity.

Your PhD research will combine three closely connected components: a systematic review of EEG measures, empirical EEG analyses, and hypothesis-driven research investigating relationships between EEG and other neurobiological markers.

The position provides an opportunity to develop expertise in EEG methodology and quantitative analysis while contributing to a broader precision medicine approach that integrates evidence across different populations, research settings, and types of biological and clinical data.

Are you excited about developing new mathematical foundations for energy-efficient computing? Do you want to contribute to cutting-edge research at the intersection of systems and control theory, optimization, circuit theory, and neuromorphic computing?

The University of Groningen is seeking a highly motivated PhD candidate to work on a fundamental research project on systems and control theory for learning in neuromorphic circuits. Neuromorphic computing is an analog, brain-inspired computing paradigm with the potential to drastically reduce energy consumption while enabling faster inference than conventional digital architectures. A major challenge, however, is the development and analysis of dedicated algorithms for training analog circuits directly from data.

In this PhD project, you will develop a novel system-theoretic framework for learning in analog circuits and dissipative networks. We will view learning as a feedback interconnection of continuous-time (circuit) dynamics and an optimization algorithm. The key idea is to develop algorithms that minimise cost functions inspired by notions of energy, leading to highly efficient, local learning rules. 

A 4-year PhD position is available at the interface of biophysical modeling, soft matter and cell mechanobiology at the Groningen Research Institute of Pharmacy, within the Faculty of Science and Engineering at the University of Groningen.

With the recent introduction of the Vanco-800CW optical tracer and the Vanco-PQ-[18F]VE PET tracer, and their ongoing (pre)clinical translation, Groningen is taking the lead in imaging of Gram-positive infections. This PhD project will focus on expanding this initiative to the imaging of other clinically-relevant infections: with Gram-negative bacteria and fungi.

This project is a part of an Ubbo Emius-funded HTRIC consortium aimed at training the next generation of scientists in biomedical applications, bringing together specialists from chemistry, imaging, cancer biology, and physics to lay the foundation for imaging-guided pharmacotherapy.

We are looking for a 4-year PhD candidate to join our nationally funded, multi-partner research consortium, Towards De-Novo Life. The main aim of this interdisciplinary project is to achieve minimal life based on chemical rather than biological components such as DNA, proteins or other macromolecules. Our PhD candidate will contribute by developing new microfluidic tools to work with micrometer-sized coacervate droplets, the compartments in which chemical replication, growth and evolution will take place.

Are you excited about designing the next generation of energy-efficient AI hardware? Do you want to contribute to cutting-edge research at the intersection of neuromorphic computing, computer architecture, and hardware acceleration?

The University of Groningen is seeking a highly motivated PhD candidate to join the international QuNeCo project, a collaborative research initiative between leading universities in the Netherlands and Japan. As part of an interdisciplinary team, you will develop novel neuromorphic computing architectures inspired by the human brain to enable future heterogeneous computing systems with unprecedented energy efficiency and performance.

This PhD position offers the opportunity to collaborate with internationally renowned researchers, publish in leading conferences and journals, and gain experience in architecture design, hardware implementation, FPGA prototyping, and AI applications.

Are you passionate about combining the directed evolution of diverse biomolecules with deep learning approaches and contributing to the development of better (bio)catalysts and drugs? We are offering three fully-funded, 4-year PhD positions at the University of Groningen or the Technical University of Eindhoven.