PhD student in Pharmacometrics

Job description

• You will take ownership of your project and organize your work and your interactions with other researchers at the department with the intent of attaining your PhD within the allotted time period.
• You will actively participate in the ongoing modelling projects at the department and engage in the weekly scientific meetings.
• You are expected to master scientific writing and presenting, publish your findings in peer-reviewed journals and present at (inter-)national conferences.
• You are expected to take part in the PhD training programme from the RUG.
• You will supervise (under-)graduate students and support (visiting) scientists new to the field of modelling & simulation.

Working environment

You will become part of the Pharmacometrics group hosted by the department of Anesthesiology at the University Medical Center Groningen, The Netherlands. Our group embraces hybrid working and allows the candidate to work remotely in accordance with the hospital/university policy.

The research project
Predicting general anaesthesia induced side-effects: from reactively restoring to proactively maintaining homeostasis.

One of the goals of the department of Anesthesiology is to optimise the use of therapeutic agents using modelling & simulation. Within the Pharmacometrics group we are currently focussing on the development of mechanistic pharmacokinetic pharmacodynamic models for predicting general anaesthesia induced side-effects such as hypotension and respiratory depression. These mechanistic models are used to optimize dosing of our anaesthetic agents and to inform the selection and dosing regimens of adjuvant treatments for maintaining physiological homeostasis during anaesthesia. In this project the PhD candidate will learn how to develop and apply mechanistic models in NONMEM for different anaesthetic agents and side-effects based on in-house data from (ongoing) clinical trials.

What do we need

• You hold a Master degree in pharmacy, bio-pharmaceutical Sciences, statistics, applied mathematics, computer science, (technical) medicine, civil or biomedical engineering.
• Hands-on experience in a research group focussing on clinical pharmacology or pharmacometrics is preferred but not essential.
• Experience with data handling & analysis in R®, C or VBA in Excel® is a strong advantage.
• You have a strong interest in quantitative sciences and are eager to learn (new) programming languages.
• You are proficient in oral and written English.

What do we offer

You will receive a contract for 32-36 hours a week. Your salary will be a minimum of € 2.570,- gross per month in the first year and a maximum of € 3.271,- gross per month (scale PhD) in the final (4th) year, based on a full-time appointment. In addition, the UMCG will offer you 8% holiday pay, and 8.3% end-of-year bonus.
The conditions of employment comply with the Collective Labour Agreement for Medical Centres (CAO-UMC).

For questions about the position

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