PhD position Computational Modelling of Biological Systems

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label Burse autorenew 2025-09-29, 17:01 history_edu Ioana Dinescu
Since its foundation in 1614, the University of Groningen has enjoyed an international reputation as a dynamic and innovative centre of higher education offering high-quality teaching and research.

Balanced study and career paths in a wide variety of disciplines encourage the 27,000 students and researchers to develop their own individual talents. Belonging to the best research universities in Europe and joining forces with prestigious partner universities and networks, the University of Groningen is truly an international place of knowledge.

Job description
The Behavioural Ecology and Self-organization Group at the University of Groningen is seeking to recruit a PhD student to strengthen its research team on Self-organization of Social systems. The position is full-time and available immediately.

Research environment
The position is part of the project Optimisation of navigation for intercepting prey during aerial hunting by birds", funded by a Grant (ALW) from the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) to Prof. Charlotte Hemelrijk.

Key objective of this project is to understand how the hunting strategy of a raptor has been shaped by evolution: whether evolution has optimised the guidance of the raptor for hunting as a specialist or as a generalist and what the robustness is of the optimised prey-targeting system in relation to the behaviour of the prey, whether it is unwary or trying to escape, it is flying solitarily or is flocking. For this the effects on the optimization of pursuit-evasion tactics, behavioral delays, flight control, biomechanics, the prey-targeting and flocking of prey will be studied in a computational model.

Evolutionary techniques will be combined with insights from models and empirical data of flight mechanics, hunting behavior (diving and level pursuit) and guidance of the aerial predator. Results will also be related to procedures used in the missile literature. The research team will also involve another PhD student working on escape of prey when solitary and when in a flock.

Both PhD students will develop and extend computational models on specific species of raptor and prey. The research project is a collaborative effort of the research team on Self-organization of Social systems and the Oxford Flight Group. Predictions generated by the computational models will be verified with hunts from real raptors in cooperation with the Oxford Flight Group. Daily supervision will come from Prof. Hemelrijk and Dr Hanno Hildenbrandt. Dr Graham Tayler (Oxford Flight Group, UK) will co-supervise the project.