Department of Electrical Engineering

Job description

Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e, www.tue.nl) is a world-leading research university specializing in engineering science & technology. The Department of Electrical Engineering is responsible for research and education in Electrical Engineering. The discipline covers technologies and electrical phenomena involved in computer engineering, information processing, energy transfer, and telecommunication. The department strives for societal relevance through an emphasis on the fields of smart sustainable systems, the connected world, and care and cure. The TU/e is the world’s best-performing research university in terms of research cooperation with industry (#1 since 2009).

Electronic Systems group at the TU/e

The Electronic Systems (ES) group (www.es.ele.tue.nl) is comprised of three full professors, two part-time full professors, two associate professors, five assistant professors, about 35 PhD candidates and postdocs, and several technical and support staff. The group has excellent infrastructure that includes individual computers, compute servers, state-of-the-art FPGA and GPU farms, sensor- and ad-hoc networking equipment, and a comprehensive range of electronic-design software.

The ES group is world-renowned for its design automation and embedded systems research. It is our ambition to provide a scientific basis for design trajectories of digital electronic circuits, embedded and cyber-physical systems. Our research results in tools and platforms such as SDF3 (www.es.ele.tue.nl/sdf3) and CompSOC (www.compsoc.eu). We have strong national and international academic and industrial contacts. The work in the PhD projects will be carried out in close collaboration with the industrial partners ASML, FEI and Technolution.

The Robust CPS program

The design of next generation high-tech professional systems for medical imaging, lithography, electron microscopy and high-end printing requires a tight coordination between computation, communication and control elements (the cyber part), and physical processes such as heating, cooling, motion, vibrations, etc. (the physical part). The scientific disciplines providing the basis for such cyber-physical systems (CPS) have historically predominantly developed independently. This separation of disciplines can no longer be sustained and urgently needs to be bridged. This is particularly important for the high-tech industry, which faces challenges of exponential growth in complexity and increasing uncertainty. The Robust CPS program will realize the paradigm shift needed to unite the relevant disciplines. The focus of the program is on the development of generic multi-disciplinary methods, models and tools to deal with the complexities inherent to CPS and to guarantee robust operation of CPS under uncertainties.

PhD candidate PhD-RCPS-1 will address the challenge of realizing high-performance, robust, data-intensive control. Systems such as electron microscopes contain data-intensive sensors (e.g. imaging) that lead to high processing workloads in the control loop that controls the system. The compute platform in such systems is nowadays typically a networked multiprocessor platform. The close coupling between quality of control and quality of workload processing requires an integrated approach to controller synthesis and the design of the compute platform. This PhD candidate will work together with two other PhD students from mechanical engineering and computer science to develop a multi-disciplinary design approach for complex data-intensive control problems that is cost-effective, utilizes computation and communication resources effectively, and results in high performance and robust operation. The work is carried out in close collaboration with Technolution and FEI. Advisors for this position are dr.ir. Sander Stuijk and prof.dr.ir. Twan Basten.

PhD candidate PhD-RCPS-2 will address the challenge of realizing high-performance, high-precision embedded control software. ASML’s wafer scanners for chip fabrication serve as the driver for the research. These systems have to process wafers at ever increasing rates under increasingly stringent nano-scale precision requirements. Traditionally, the design methodologies addressing system throughput (computer and electrical engineering) are completely different from those focusing on system precision (physics and control). The goal of this research is to blend methods from different domains into a model-based development approach that supports system-wide trade-off analysis (precision against performance) and synthesis of software, electronics and mechanics that satisfy performance and precision constraints. Advisors for this position are dr.ir. Marc Geilen, dr.ir. Jeroen Voeten and prof.dr.ir. Twan Basten. The PhD candidate will work together with three other PhD students from the TU/e electrical engineering and mechanical engineering departments. The work will be carried out in close cooperation with ASML.

Job requirements

We are looking for excellent candidates who meet the following requirements. You should have an MSc in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Computer Science, Mechanical Engineering or a similar relevant program with a strong mathematical training and very good programming skills (in C, C++, Java). You should have demonstrated research skills, be highly motivated, and have good communication skills. Experience in modeling and analyzing embedded and/or control software and knowledge of supervisory and/or feedback control will strengthen your application. You should be eager to push the state-of-the-art, and to show your research results with working demonstrators and publications in top conferences and journals.

Conditions of employment

What we offer

We offer a challenging job at a dynamic and ambitious university through a fixed-term appointment for the period of 4 years. The research during this period must be concluded with the attainment of a PhD degree. A salary is offered starting at Euro 2083 per month (gross) in the first year and increasing up to Euro 2664 per month (gross) in the last year. You will also receive excellent secondary benefits (annually holiday allowance and end of year allowance etc.). Assistance for finding accommodation can be given.

TU/e offers opportunities for personal development by developing your social and communication skills. We do this by offering every PhD student a series of courses as an excellent addition to your scientific education.

Information and application

Application procedure

If interested, please use 'apply now' button at the top of this page. You should upload the following (all in English):

1. A 1-page cover letter, including all of the following: availability (starting date), the position(s) you apply for, and a motivation arguing why you are qualified for the(se) position(s).

2. Curriculum vitae, including complete education and employment histories, publication record including theses, proof of proficiency in English, any teaching experience you may have, and the names of at least three references that can be contacted.

3. Scans of certificates showing BSc, MSc, and other courses followed, with grades and rankings.

4. At least one and at most two selected publications (e.g. MSc thesis) in English of which you are the first or main contributing author.

Please keep in mind; you can upload only 5 documents up to 2 MB each.

More information

For more information about the advertised positions you can contact:

Prof.dr.ir. Twan Basten: email a.a.basten@tue.nl, tel +31 40 247 5782

Dr.ir. Marc Geilen: email m.c.w.geilen@tue.nl, tel +31 40 247 3091

Dr.ir. Sander Stuijk: email s.stuijk@tue.nl, tel +31 40 247 3387

Dr.ir. Jeroen Voeten: email: j.p.m.voeten@tue.nl, tel +31 40 247 3304