PhD on Digital Twin Platform for AI-supported Obesity Prevention

at  TU Eindhoven

JOB DESCRIPTION

The aim of the European project HealthyW8 is to develop and test digital interventions specifically tailored to different populations at vulnerable stages and situations in life. As one of two TUE PhDs in HealthyW8, you will contribute to advancing digital platform design knowledge integrating AI technology in an ethical manner. Your PhD project will specifically focus on developing a framework to deliver personalized and adaptive recommendations to participants, with the aim of improving their adherence to the intervention. Based on the literature and other ongoing research initiatives, there is great potential in shaping further the notion of human digital twins for behavior change. For that, you will prototype and evaluate novel extensions to the architecture and recommendation components of an existing platform (www.gamebus.eu).
TUE is responsible for testing and validating a variety of digital interventions by personalized context adaptations among a group of school children as well as young adults. For both groups, both short (< 3 months) and long-term (1 year) trials will be designed and executed by TUE and its European partners. The trials will consider psychological and emotional states, technology acceptance, user-friendliness of the tools, and actual usage and engagement. The interventions will be based on novel integrations of a previously developed mobile dietary app from Luxembourg and the GameBus platform (see https://www.gamebus.eu/ and http://experiencer.eu/), which has been designed and refined via multiple TUE projects since 2015.
You will be supervised at the department of Industrial Engineering for leading the information systems research, systems tailoring, and technical operations project tasks, while a second TUE PhD will be supervised primarily at the Urban Systems and Real Estate (USRE) unit of the department of the built environment, leading the experiment planning and organization tasks.
As a TUE PhD, you will receive the autonomy and responsibility to propose and refine the specific research contributions and information systems artifacts that will together lead to your PhD dissertation. For that, you will be stimulated to consider also emerging AI technologies, such as human digital twins, large language models, especially when aiming to personalize digital technology at scale, while respecting privacy and accountability challenges that are pressing when working with various stakeholders and populations, including children and young adolescents. In the spirit of Open Science, you will be stimulated to go beyond the state-of-the-art of data sharing for reproducibility, for example by applying novel strategies to generating synthetic data out of highly sensitive children’s data. A variety of exploratory projects were recently conducted on these topics, and the successful candidate will excel at reconciling personal vision and competencies with such enablers from the TUE context (e.g., building on results of other European projects such as https://vitalise-project.eu/ and its successors).
Besides demonstrating scientific interests and skills, you should also be technically proficient and pro-active on the engineering side (e.g., programming, systematic testing, git collaboration, database interactions). You will thrive through collaborations with other PhD students with similar scientific challenges, studying and refining novel information systems techniques for other target groups (e.g., mental healthcare, diabetes management, etc.). See https://www.wur.nl/en/newsarticle/research-on-healthy-lifestyle-for-low-literate-teenagers-gets-1.7-million-euros-1.htm and https://eurecat.org/en/portfolio-items/ibechange/ for example.

JOB REQUIREMENTS

• A master’s degree (or an equivalent academic degree) in Information Systems, Software Engineering, Human-Computer Interaction, or a related discipline.
• A research-oriented attitude (accountable, visionary, ethical, collaborative, curious, …)
• An engineering-oriented attitude (can-do, will-build, has-tested, …)
• Affinity with web development tools (APIs, databases, at least one front-end framework)
• Curiosity in disruptive business models to address societal challenges and contribute to sustainable development goals
• Eagerness to work in an interdisciplinary team and a pan-European project
• Excellent communications skills
• Good skills for planning, pro-active monitoring and strategic pivoting
• Fluent in spoken and written English (C1 level)

ABOUT US

Eindhoven University of Technology is an internationally top-ranking university in the Netherlands that combines scientific curiosity with a hands-on attitude. Our spirit of collaboration translates into an open culture and a top-five position in collaborating with advanced industries. Fundamental knowledge enables us to design solutions for the highly complex problems of today and tomorrow.
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Please refer the Job description for details