Job offer: PhD position at UGent / KU Leuven

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Application deadline: April 30th 2022

Topic: Increasing fairness and welfare in allocation problems

Supervisors: prof. Dries Goossens & Greet Vanden Berghe

Starting date: September 2023

We are looking for a full-time PhD student to do research in the field of Operations Research under the supervision of prof. Dries Goossens, Department of Business Informatics and Operations Management (Faculty of Economics and Business Administration) of Ghent University, and prof. Greet Vanden Berghe, CODES group (Faculty of Engineering Technology) of KU Leuven. We offer a fully funded position for a period of 4 years (upon yearly positive evaluation); this work should lead to a PhD degree.

The PhD researcher will work primarily on (resource) assignment/allocation problems, and focus on fairness and welfare issues. Deciding how indivisible units of a scarce resource should be assigned to people is a common problem in our society. We can make a distinction between settings where it is inappropriate to use monetary transfers to settle this, and settings where a payment is used to acquire the resource or compensate those who get nothing. Examples of the former are assigning students to schools, deciding which patients can receive an organ transplant, assigning patients to hospital rooms, work rosters to staff, or playing schedules to sports teams. In the latter set of problems, an auction or an exchange can be organized. The objective is to publish excellent research papers on this topic, but at the same time, to have practical relevance and/or an impact on society.

Although the focus is definitely on research, the candidate can be asked to give guidance to Bachelor and Master students, to be involved in teaching activities and to supervise exams.

He/she will find a dynamic and pleasant working environment, in a group that is actively involved in scientific research at the highest international level. Candidates will be expected to participate in seminars and conferences, be internationally mobile and to enrol in our PhD program. Candidates should have a strong interest in OR and preferably hold a Master's degree in Business Engineering, Mathematics, Computer Science, Industrial Engineering, Operations Research, or equivalent. Students that are currently in the final year of their Masters are especially encouraged to apply. Strong programming skills are required.

We offer an employment as full-time doctoral scholar for 1 year, renewable up until max. 4 years after positive evaluation.  The tentative starting date is September 2023, depending on the availability of the candidate.  All information can be found here: https://www.sportscheduling.ugent.be/Docs/VacancyBOF2023.pdf

Any questions? Contact prof. Dries Goossens (mailto:[email protected]).

Interested? Please apply before April 30th 2023, by sending an email to mailto:[email protected], including your resume, a motivation letter, a copy of your degree and study results.