Job Description
ABOUT GHENT UNIVERSITY
Ghent University is a world of its own. Employing more than 15.000 people, it is actively involved in education and research, management and administration, as well as technical and social service provision on a daily basis. It is one of the largest, most exciting employers in the area and offers great career opportunities.
With its 11 faculties and more than 85 departments offering state-of-the-art study programmes grounded in research in a wide range of academic fields, Ghent University is a logical choice for its staff and students.
For the Training and Research Institute for Surgical AI (Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, Department of Human Structure and Repair), in collaboration with ORSI Innotech, we are looking for a motivated doctoral fellow.
YOUR JOB
For our international interdisciplinary research team focused on computer vision and surgical video analysis, we are looking for a motivated research assistant. This is a full-time, one-year position that is renewable once (upon a favorable evaluation) for a maximum total period of four years. The ultimate goal of the research is always to obtain a doctoral degree. The funding for this position primarily comes from the following BOF-funded interdisciplinary research project: “Computer Vision Metrics for Objective Evaluation of Surgeon Performance in Robotic Pancreatic Surgery”. The candidate will work as a Research Assistant at the Campus of UZ Ghent in Belgium in close collaboration with ORSI Innotech, Melle, Belgium. The researcher is expected to join an international interdisciplinary research team and, in collaboration with other PhD candidates and researchers with medical and engineering background, perform innovative research on the topic of surgical video analysis, with the goal of developing deep machine learning techniques for the analysis of surgical videos focusing on error detection and performance metrics.
Responsibilities:
- Drafting study protocols and submitting requests to the ethical committee.
- Defining predictive tasks based on clinical goals.
- Selecting and setting up appropriate data preprocessing pipelines.
- Training and evaluation of computer vision models.
- Internal and external algorithmic validation, both offline and realtime
- Reporting and presenting research results at internal and external events (regular project meetings, major international conferences like MICCAI, CVPR, and NeurIPS).
- Contributing to the publication of research results in peer-reviewed international journals.
- Help with lightweight educational activities, such as supervision of exams, supervision of yearly bachelor/master projects, and supervision of occasional internships (research-driven education).
Job profile
- You hold, or you are expected to hold by September 2025, a Master’s degree (preferably) in one of the following disciplines: computer science/engineering or biomedical engineering. You have an excellent academic record of accomplishment. In particular, you have a good command of, and a strong interest in, computer programming.
- You are highly motivated to conduct (applied) research at the intersection of (deep) machine learning and the health sciences.
- You have good programming skills in languages such as Pythorch, and Python and are fluent using GitHub in a team setting.
- You have basic working knowledge on fundamental computer vision tasks such as temporal and spatial segmentation as well as stereo vision.
- You have strong analytical skills to interpret the obtained experimental results.
- You are driven to do independent research, and you have a strong self-learning ability. A creative and inquisitive attitude is a necessity.
- You have an excellent command of English, both written and orally.
- You are comfortable with working in an international and multi-cultural research team that is dynamic in nature.
- You have some experience with scientific computing and machine learning.
- You possess good academic writing and presentation skills or have a strong willingness to learn.
WHAT WE CAN OFFER YOU
- We offer a full-time position as a doctoral fellow, consisting of an initial period of 12 months, which – after a positive evaluation, will be extended to a total maximum of 48 months.
- Your contract will start on 1/9/2025 at the earliest.
- The fellowship amount is 100% of the net salary of an AAP member in equal family circumstances. The individual fellowship amount is determined by Team Personnel Administration based on family status and seniority. A grant that meets the conditions and criteria of the regulations for doctoral fellowships is considered free of personal income tax. Click here for more information about our salary scales
- All Ghent University staff members enjoy a number of benefits, such as a wide range of training and education opportunities, 36 days of holiday leave (on an annual basis for a full-time job) supplemented by annual fixed bridge days, bicycle allowance and eco vouchers. Click here for a complete overview of all the staff benefits.
How to apply
Send your CV, copy of your diploma (if already in your possession) and a motivation letter prof. Niki Rashidian( nikdokht.rashidian@UGent.be) and Pieter de Backer (predback.DeBacker@ugent.be).
We do not accept late applications.
MORE INFORMATION
For more information about this vacancy, please contact Prof. Niki Rashidian nikdokht.rashidian@UGent.be, +32(0)933 25957.
