PhD-Student GROW-School for Oncology and Developmental Biology - Department of Radiotherapy

PhD student to develop a Decision Support Systems using Big Data.

Job Specifications - (uitleg)

Solliciteer binnen 13 dagen op deze vacature

Maastricht University has a vacancy for a PhD student at the faculty of Health Medicine and Life Sciences in the department of Radiation Oncology (MAASTRO). MAASTRO’s strategic goal is to tailor cancer treatments to the clinical, biological and genetic characteristics of an individual patient so that the best outcome can be achieved. An important part of MAASTRO’s strategy is the research line Radiomics where "machine learning" techniques are applied for knowledge discovery from large imaging datasets (http://www.radiomics.org).

Together with partners Tata Memorial Centre, C-DAC and Philips in India and ptTheragnostic in The Netherlands, MAASTRO has received NWO IndoDutch funding for a 4 year research project called BIONIC (Big Imaging data approach for Oncology in a Netherlands India Collaboration).

The general aim of this NWO IndoDutch BIONIC is to unite academic, industrial and clinical leaders to improve cancer care using a Big Data approach for medical imaging. Vast amounts of patient image data from top cancer centers in the Netherlands and India will be used, in a privacy preserving manner, to develop Decision support systems. We will prove that use of these decision support systems will lead to better treatment decisions.

In this project, you will be member of an international team of physicians, physicist, computer scientists and software engineers who jointly develop Big Data technology to open up petabytes of medical imaging data stored in hospitals worldwide and use it to learn of decision support systems for cancer treatments.

Specifically, you will develop and deploy the technology to learn and validate predictive models for lung, cervical, head&neck and rectal cancer patients. You will build on existing models developed by the group and extend these with Radiomics features to improve their performance accuracy in the prediction of survival, tumor control and toxicities. You will do this work in a privacy preserving manner where no data needs to leave the individual hospital so that privacy maximally preserved. Challenges regarding data quality and interoperability between centres in The Netherlands and India as well as the mathematical challenges of learning models without “seeing” the data will be addressed by you in a team setting.

Specific: You are a highly motivated individual with a MSc in biomedical engineering, (medical) physics, computer science, artificial intelligence, machine learning or equivalent. Interest and experience with machine learning and with medical images, DICOM and image analysis are highly recommended. You should have a strong interest in data integration, ontologies, Linked Data and Semantic Web technology. Proven software engineering skills are a plus.

Generic: You are open-minded, independent, pragmatic and result-oriented individual with a strong international orientation and are able to take initiative. You are willing to travel between India and The Netherlands and can adapt your working hours so that optimal communication between these international groups is maintained.  You are fluent in English, both in writing and speech. We are looking for a positively minded student motivated to learn new approaches and ready to work hard to build a scientific career in the area of basic and translational oncology research. You will closely collaborate with other members of the MAASTRO Knowledge Engineering and Radiomics team and with the colleagues in India.

The terms of employment of Maastricht University are set out in the Collective Labour Agreement of Dutch Universities (CAO). Furthermore, local UM provisions also apply. For more information look at the website http://www.maastrichtuniversity.nl > Support > UM employees.

Temporary employment for 4 years.

Your salary would be € 2.174,- gross per month in the first year up to € 2.779,- gross per month in the fourth year according to the PhD-student salary scale.

Each year an evaluation will take place.

Employment: Temporary, 4 Years

http://www.maastrichtuniversity.nl/

Maastricht University is renowned for its unique, innovative, problem-based learning system, which is characterized by a small-scale and student-oriented approach. Research at UM is characterized by a multidisciplinary and thematic approach, and is concentrated in research institutes and schools. Maastricht University has around 16,000 students and 4,000 employees. Reflecting the university's strong international profile, a fair amount of both students and staff are from abroad. The university hosts 6 faculties: Faculty of Health, Medicine and Life Sciences, Faculty of Law, School of Business and Economics, Faculty of Humanities and Sciences, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, Faculty of Psychology and Neuroscience.

GROW - School for Oncology and Developmental Biology

GROW focuses on research and teaching of (epi)genetic, cellular and (micro)environmental factors and mechanisms underlying normal (embryonic and fetal) and abnormal (cancer) development, with emphasis on translational research aiming at innovative approaches for individualizing prevention, patient diagnostics and treatment.

MAASTRO Knowledge Engineering

The MAASTRO research division “Knowledge Engineering” is a computer science focused department embedded within a clinical environment (MAASTRO Clinic) and closely affiliated with GROW. MAASTRO KE performs research with the aim to provide decision support systems for individualized radiotherapy.  It has two research themes:

- Build global data and application IT infrastructures across radiotherapy centers

- Use these data to machine learn individual prediction models that can be used for decision support.

For more information contact: Prof.dr.ir. A.L.A.J. (Andre) Dekker, PhD, Medical Physicist, Manager Research and Education
MAASTRO Clinic
Head of Knowledge Engineering Department of Radiation Oncology (MAASTRO)
GROW School for Oncology and Developmental Biology, Maastricht University Medical Centre+
Full Professor “Clinical Data Science” Maastricht University

Contact details T: +31-(0)88-4455824 E: andre.dekker@maastro.nl