PhD student data science/artificial intelligence for protein transition

Do you want to have societal impact with your data science skills? You can make a valuable contribution to the protein transition which is needed to make food production and consumption more sustainable, healthier and safer. Within the BIGFOOD project, you will develop innovative data-driven approaches and artificial intelligence techniques and tools for the integration and analysis of data on nutrition and food. You will study the effects of the protein transition and identify and analyse promising measures in the field of public health, food safety and environmental impact. You will be part of multidisciplinary team. Your peer reviewed papers will result in a PhD thesis.

Purpose of the position

Innovative data-driven approaches are essential for addressing urgent societal challenges such as a sustainable food production and sustainable diets, i.e. healthy, safe and with a low(er) environmental impact. The protein transition, to a diet and food production system with more vegetable and fewer animal protein sources, is important for the climate change and biodiversity crises. The protein transition is the focus of the project BIGFOOD: Farm to fork transitions and their impact – big data approaches.

Your data science skills help you to make available, combine and analyse data from various parts of the food chain, to identify promising strategies and calculate (potential) effects of interventions. For example, you will work on an ontology and knowledge graphs for the application domain, enabling FAIR data sharing across systems and applications. You also develop and apply evolutionary algorithms, natural language processing, semantic technologies and machine learning techniques and apply them to different databases and datasets, creating new techniques e.g. for decision making.

Activities and tasks

• You will participate in the BIGFOOD project, and work with data from the food chain to elaborate technical data-driven solutions for protein transition.
• Together with colleagues, you refine research questions and make research plans.
• You create and apply data science and artificial intelligence techniques, such as for semantic web, linked data, interoperability and interlinking, knowledge graphs construction and embedding, data enrichment, reasoning and decision making, and FAIR data management.
• You write scientific publications for international peer-reviewed journals and a dissertation that lead to a PhD.
• You create prototypes (in programming languages such as Python, Java or R) for data linking and analysis facilitating data reuse by other researchers.
• You present your research within RIVM and the Wageningen University, and at (inter)national conferences and other forums.

Your PhD work is supervised by Prof Dr Anna Fensel of Wageningen University and Dr Marga Ocké of the RIVM. Other colleagues with expertise in data science and food and nutrition will assist in the supervisory team. You will be stationed at RIVM, and can work part-time at Wageningen University. We are set up for hybrid working, so you can also carry out part of the work from home.

Unique to this job

• You have the opportunity to obtain an interdisciplinary PhD and create impact on a societal relevant and topical theme.
• You develop solid technical solutions within a rich data infrastructure with many different data sources.
• You work in a multidisciplinary team with colleagues from data science and artificial intelligence and with experts on healthy, safe and sustainable diets.
• You work in an enthusiastic and collegial network of external partners within the BIGFOOD consortium.
• You take courses that contribute to your development as a researcher.

Description of the team / work culture

The BIGFOOD project team consists of about fifteen colleagues from different RIVM departments.

The Nutrition and Health department is your home base and has over thirty colleagues. The atmosphere in this department is cosy, relaxed, cooperative and helpful. In the department we research a range of policy interventions for sustainable(er) and healthier food supply and food consumption. We make a major contribution to the successful design, introduction and monitoring of product improvement, Nutri-Score and determining the “Carbon footprint” of foods. With a variety of data and techniques, we make 'everything you always wanted to know' about food and food consumption transparent for everyone. With up-to-date data on food consumption, we can respond flexibly to policy questions in the field of food safety, health and sustainability. The Food Consumption Surveys enjoy national and international prestige.

Your PhD study project will be conducted at Wageningen University. The mission of Wageningen University & Research (WUR) 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. WUR has the greenest and most innovative campus in Holland, and the university has been chosen as the “ Best University ” in the Netherlands for the 18th consecutive time.