Phd positions in University of Ghent, Belgium

With support from its “Special Research Fund” (BOF), Ghent University wishes to support university research groups or research centres in developing countries in their aim to grow into excellent research centres by upgrading local academic personnel. Therefore Ghent University grants PhD scholarships to promising PhD students from developing countries who wish to carry out half of their PhD research at Ghent University and half in a university in a developing country. No restrictions are imposed on the field of research, nevertheless  preference will be given to topics that are relevant for development. Relevance for development measures the degree in which the action of development corresponds with the expectations of the beneficiaries, the needs of the country, global priorities and the policies of partners and donors.

This program is limited to universities and research centers in developing countries  with which Ghent University is already cooperating or has cooperated in the last 5 years. It is the Ghent University promoter who has to present evidence of this previous cooperation.

These grants take the form of a so called “sandwich” scholarship: the candidate obtains a scholarship for 24 months to work within a span of 48 months on an alternating basis on the PhD at Ghent University and at the university or research center in the country of origin of the candidate.

The proposals must be submitted by a promoter at Ghent Universityand a supervisor at the local institution.

Before applying student need to find a professor from Ghent University who is willing to act as the supervisor ('promoter') of their doctoral research and who agrees to support their application. The best way to do this is by browsing the list of faculties and research topics available on the research directory of our website: http://www.ugent.be/en/research/topresearch/researchdirectory.htm.

Duration

The candidate obtains a scholarship for 24 months which must be divided into several periods within a span of 4 years. In principle the scholarship holder starts the PhD scholarship research at Ghent University during a period of 3 to 9 months and ends the scholarship with a stay of at least 3 months at Ghent University to complete and defend the doctoral thesis.

Who can apply?

To be admissible for this call, all of the following requirements must be met:

• Candidates need to come from – and have the nationality of – a developing country (see list);
• There must be a guarantee that the candidate will be able to work on the PhD project at the partner university. This implies that there must be a local PhD supervisor at the partner university or research center. Also a written  statement is requested from that supervisor or the university authorities stating that the candidate is either a student or a staff member of this university and will be sufficiently exempted from teaching or other assignments as to be able to fully concentrate on the PhD research.
• This statement should also mention that the candidate receives/received a local scholarship or salary when working on the PhD in the home institute.

Application Process

The candidate applies to Ghent University jointly with a promoter of Ghent University and a supervisor at the local institution.

The promoter at Ghent University has to fill in a separate document ('promoter's advice'- only available in Dutch) with advice on the candidate, stating the promoter's opinion on the potential of the candidate as a future researcher.

The Research Council makes a selection of the applications based in part on the recommendations obtained from members of the Council for Development Cooperation. The recommendation is based on:

• the doctoral project;
• the relevance of the research topic for development;
• the qualifications of the applicant for the doctoral grant;
• the scientific/scholarly potential of the promoter’s research group(s);
• the partnership between Ghent University and the local institute;
• the scientific/scholarly potential of the local institute.

Funding

The candidate receives a "sandwich"type scholarship for a total of 24 months. Within a span of 48 months, the candidate needs to work on the PhD project both at Ghent University and the partner university. Only for the periods the scholarship holder works at Ghent University the scholarship holder will receive a monthly income. The rest of the PhD research is done in the partner university for which no funding is provided through this scholarship. The partner university has to provide a salary or local scholarship for the period the candidate works there.

The value of the scholarship at Ghent University depends on, a.o., the researcher’s family situation and is approximately €1,700.

The Ghent University promoter also receives a bench fee of €15.440 to cover (part of) the operational costs, as well as the travelling costs of the student and both the Ghent University and the local promoter.

Deadline

Deadline 8 March 2012

Further information

BOF@UGent.be

Download Phd Announcement

PhD or post-doc position in Numerical Hemodynamics (Belgium)

EFFICIENT FLUID-STRUCTURE INTERACTION MODELS FOR CARDIOVASCULAR AND RESPIRATORY SIMULATIONS

The department of Mechanics at the Université catholique de Louvain is accepting applications for a PhD or post-doc position in the context of the NHEMO project (numerical hemodynamics).

The NHEMO project is a joint project of the biomechanical group at UCL and the Department of Vascular Surgery at the University Hospital St-Luc. Its research activities are aimed at:

* modeling the flow of biological fluids, more especially blood in large vessels and also air in the respiratory tracts, both in normal and pathological states
* developing and analyzing efficient, robust and reliable numerical methods for the simulation of such flows.
* developing simulation software to guide medical decisions and to design more efficient medical devices.

The research will focus on efficient fluid-structure interaction models for cardiovascular and respiratory simulations. Indeed, fluid-structure coupling occurs both in the circulatory and the respiratory systems. Most of the time, the fluid-structure interaction problem involves a coupling between the 3D Navier-Stokes equations and a 3D non-linear structure in large displacement. In the context of physiological systems, this coupling procedure is complex for several reasons: (1) the displacement of the wall cannot be supposed to be infinitesimal, geometric non-linearities are therefor present in the structure and the fluid problem has to be solved in a moving domain (2) in case of the cardiovascular system, the densities of the artery walls and the blood being close, the coupling is strong and has to be tackled very carefully (implicitly) to avoid numerical instabilities, (3) naïve boundary conditions on the artificial boundaries induce spurious reflection phenomena.

Because of the above mentioned difficulties, the interaction between the flow and the structure are often neglected or is considered only for a small portion of the cardiovascular or respiratory system since the computational cost of such a fully coupled procedure is still very expensive.

The aim of this work is to focus on more efficient fluid-structure interaction algorithms such as a coupling between the 3D Navier-Stokes equations and a 1D structure model or a MRI dynamic geometric model.

The applicant work within the developed codes and with a dynamic interdisciplinary team.

The position will be mentored by Emilie Marchandise, professor of Biomechanics and Jean-François Remacle, Professor of Civil Engineering. The work will take place at the Applied Mechanics Division at UCL: http://www.uclouvain.be/mema.

The candidate should have a solid background in numerical methods and simulation. He should have a genuine interest in nonlinear fluid/solid mechanics, constitutive modeling. In order to better understand the physiological problems, interest in the human physiology is welcome to consider the specific modeling challenges of cardiovascular and respiratory systems. It is anticipated that the successful candidate will start by January of 2010, with an immediate start being preferred.

Send resume : Prof. Emilie Marchandise , Prof. Jean-Francois Remacle 

PhD in Belgium

Title : Data acquisition and analysis for rapid, non-invasive diagnosis of neurological infections

Promotor: Uwe Himmelreich

Description: The aim of this project is the development of a rapid, non-invasive method for the diagnosis of neurological infectious diseases, which are still a major problem in tropical and developing countries. The project is a combined initiative between the Biomedical NMR unit (U. Himmelreich, Biomedical Sciences Group) and the Department of electrical engineering (S. Van Huffel, Science, Engineering and Technology Group). Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) and Spectroscopy (MRS) data will be acquired from experimental models of brain infections and from patients. Automated processing and evaluation methods will be developed for a rapid and robust classification (diagnosis) of brain infections according to microbial etiology.

Infectious diseases are one of the leading health problems in developing countries in tropical and subtropical regions. Delays in diagnosis and initiation of appropriate therapy are major contributors to unacceptably high morbidity and mortality from brain abscesses. Current diagnostic methods are invasive and microbial identification may take several hours to days. Current radiological imaging procedures (like MRI) have increased the ability to detect brain lesions, but they do not provide a pathological diagnosis. Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy (MRS) detects chemical signatures in living cells and we and others have found that when applied to patients undergoing MRI scans, MRS can distinguish readily between abscesses and tumors. There is preliminary evidence that MRS also distinguishes between abscesses due to different pathogens and between active and treated infections, which will have huge implications on therapy.

In the PhD project, experimental models for brain abscesses due to different microorganisms (gram-positive and –negative bacteria, fungi etc.) will be developed, progress and therapy of the infection will be monitored non-invasively by MRI/ MRS. In addition, clinical data from our institution but also from collaborators in India (Sanjay Ghandi Institute of Medical Sciences, Lucknow) and Australia (Sydney University) will be used for translational studies, comparing metabolic pattern in experimental and clinical abscesses. For the data analysis and development of diagnostic strategies, different automated feature selection techniques, automated pattern recognition methods and algorithms to combine MRI and MRS data (nosologic images) will be further developed for the application in infectious diseases.

This program will generate a method for non-invasive, etiological diagnosis of brain abscesses by in vivo neurospectroscopy. This will potentially result in improved patient management of neurological infections in particular in developing countries.

Programme: Molecular and Stem Cell Medicine

Start date: 2010-10-01
Application date: 2009-12-01
Publication date: 2009-10-01

Financing: IRO

Link: http://www.saic.be and http://www.kuleuven.be/cv/u0013262e.htm

Research group: Department of Medical Diagnostic Sciences

Remarks: The project will focus on the development of automated methods to diagnose infective brain abscesses. Brain abscesses are not very common in developed countries but are a leading health problem in developing countries in tropical and subtropical regions. One bottleneck for their rapid diagnosis by using non-invasive imaging methods like MRI/ MRS (which are available in developing countries) is the lack of data that would allow the non-invasive identification of the infection causing microorganisms. By combining the efforts in the Biomedical NMR Unit on MRI/ MRS data acquisition in experimental models of brain infections with clinical data from collaborators in India (Ghandi Institute of Medical Sciences, Lucknow) and the expertise at ESAT on MRI/ MRS data analysis/ classification, we believe that we can make significant contributions to develop a non-invasive diagnostic tool from that patients in the developing world will directly benefit. By choosing a potential candidate from a developing country, transfer of knowledge can be accelerated.

Click here to apply to this project