Postdoc position on Operations Research methods for multi-appointment planning

Appointment planning in healthcare and the legal system show great similarity: both settings have random arrivals of jobs (patients or legal cases), and, often, for each job a series of tasks with random duration to be executed at different points in time by different sets of servers.

Building on our considerable expertise in healthcare, this project aims to extend Operations Research methods for multi-appointment planning in a random environment inspired by both healthcare and the legal system. This will offer the opportunity to explore the uncharted territory of optimizing planning in the legal system, starting from a sound basis of Operations Research methods developed for the healthcare system.

You will develop Operations Research models and data-driven decision rules for multi-appointment planning. Typically, you will work in a Markov decision framework, developing tools in approximate dynamic programming, stochastic programming, and reinforcement learning.

You will have the opportunity to implement your decision rules in prototype decision support systems to facilitate their further development towards real-life use in the Dutch legal system.

Requirements:

• You have acquired a PhD degree in mathematics, operations research, econometrics, industrial engineering, or a closely related discipline.
• You have excellent programming skills.
• You are an enthusiastic and highly motivated researcher.
• You have a creative mindset and excellent communication skills.
• You have a good team spirit and like to work in an interdisciplinary and internationally oriented environment.
• You are proficient in English.
• The UT and the faculty EEMCS are inclusive toward underrepresented groups and strive to increase the proportion of female staff. Female applicants are particularly welcome.

Salary Benefits:

• You will be appointed for a period of a maximum of 16 months full-time within a very stimulating scientific environment. The university offers a dynamic ecosystem with enthusiastic colleagues.
• Your salary and associated conditions are in accordance with the collective labour agreement for Dutch universities (CAO-NU);
• Gross salary between € 4.060,- and € 5.331,- per month depending on experience and qualifications;
• Excellent benefits including a holiday allowance of 8% of the gross annual salary, a year-end bonus of 8.3% and a solid pension scheme.
• Free access to sports facilities on campus
• A minimum of 232 leave hours in case of full-time employment based on a formal workweek of 38 hours. A full-time employment in practice means 40 hours a week, therefore resulting in 96 extra leave hours on an annual basis.
• Excellent support for research and facilities for professional and personal development.
• We encourage a high degree of responsibility and independence while collaborating with close colleagues, researchers and other university staff.
• We are also a family-friendly institution that offers parental leave (both paid and unpaid) and career support for partners.

40 hours per week

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