PhD Student - Advanced Sleep Monitoring Solutions

Job description

Candidate profile
We look for two candidates with expertise in Interaction design, covering either technical aspects relating to pervasive applications, or psychology aspects relating to human computer interaction, motivation, and behavior change. Together the two candidates will be selected to ensure they provide both technical and human expertise necessary for taking on the challenges of this project. Experience in the field of sleep research or personal health monitoring solutions will be highly appreciated. The candidates should demonstrate an affinity with designing technology for behavior change, combining an innovative hands-on approach with a scientific grounding and insight.
The PhD positions are fully funded for 4 years; the PhD candidates will be stationed partly at the premises of Philips Design in Eindhoven and partly at the TU/e. A multi-disciplinary team with expertise in design, human computer interaction and sleep medicine will provide guidance and supervision. The supervision team will include an industrial coach, an academic coach and a clinical expert, ensuring the relevance and quality of the research.
Project context
This project brings together the Kempenhaege Center for Sleep Medicine, the Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e) and Philips, with the aim to explore a holistic approach to sleep care that extends beyond the clinic to the home. It is part of a larger collaboration of these three institutes involving 8 PhD students working on the topic of Advanced Sleep Monitoring. Collaboration and cross fertilization between projects will be encouraged.
The two PhD projects will explore respectively:
i. technological solutions to support the self-monitoring of subjective sleep quality and related behaviors that can be effective outside clinic; and
ii. design of personalized, adaptive (digital) solutions to support cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia.
These two topics are inherently intertwined and are envisioned as integral parts of a care network that includes patients, peers, healthcare services at home, technological solutions, informal caregivers, therapists, and doctors. Some more details are provided below.
i. Smart subjective sleep monitoring
This project aims to develop interactive technology that will help health care professionals as well as users themselves, to monitor sleep and sleep related behaviors, and obtain a record of experienced sleep quality. Doing so is challenging for several reasons: there are many physiological and behavioral parameters that pertain to sleep quality, but monitoring itself may be expensive, obtrusive, and may even disturb sleep. Design innovation can support multi-modal ways of recording sleep quality that fit seamlessly into daily routines, can be themselves pleasurable and rewarding as interaction experiences, and can be maintained over longer periods. Second, sleep quality is a subjective experience and strong correlations have not yet been established with sleep related parameters that can be monitored objectively by technological means. The project shall extend our understanding of the different facets of subjective sleep quality, develop in depth selected solutions, and evaluate the emerging user experience over time as people engage with such technologies in their daily lives and their own living environment.
ii. Digital cognitive behavioral therapy
Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is the cornerstone of insomnia treatment, as it is known to be more effective than medication on the long term for the majority of patients. Digital Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (DCBT), in which interactive applications support patients in the therapeutic process, may reduce the required workload for CBT and allow more people with sleep problems to benefit. Even more important, DCBT may potentially improve therapeutic results by allowing highly individual tailored treatment. Attempts to support CBT with digital technology have shown a lot of promise but have not yet succeeded in ensuring a high uptake by patients, as they are often laborious and not easily integrated in daily life. Another major challenge concerns the adherence of patients to the therapy. This project aims to understand how digital services and/or products can support CBT, and more specifically, to explore and evaluate different ways in which people’s behavior could be influenced and DCBT interventions can be carried out to ensure adherence to the therapy.
Job requirements
Candidates should hold Masters or equivalent in a field relevant to the research topic (Industrial Design, Human Technology Interaction, Computer Science, Health Informatics, Psychology).
Affinity and expertise on the topic of designing interactive systems are required. Familiarity with the topic of sleep will be appreciated.
The candidates should have perfect command of the English language; knowledge of Dutch will weigh very positively.
Conditions of employment
-         a full-time temporary appointment for a period of 4 years, with an intermediate evaluation after 9 months;
-         a gross salary of € 2.125,
- euro per month in the first year and increasing up to € 2.717,
- euro gross per month in the fourth year;
-         Moreover 8% bonus share (holiday supplement) and 8.3% bonus share (end-of-the-year allowance) are provided annually.
-         excellent employment conditions (including excellent sport facilities and child care).
-         Assistance for finding accommodation will be provided.
Information and application
Information
General information about the Department Industrial Design, candidates will find on http://w3.id.tue.nl/. About this project and position candidates can get more information from prof. dr. Panos Markopoulos, phone 31 (0)40 247 5247 31 (0)40 247 5247, e-mail: ************@*******.**
If you have any questions about the application procedure, please contact Mrs. Karlijn le Comte 31 40 247 5336 31 40 247 5336, email: ************@*******.** or Mrs. Ingrid Broers ( 31 40 247 8827 31 40 247 8827, email: ************@*******.** of the Personnel Department of the Dept. of Industrial Design of the TU/e.
Application
Candidates are kindly asked to submit their application (a cover letter explaining your motivation to the PhD study and specific interests in this project, an extensive curriculum vitae, academic transcripts and any other supporting documents (e.g. publications, awards)) by using the "apply now" button on top of this page before September 10th, 2015. Applications send by e-mail will not be accepted.
Recruitment process and contact
For more information or to apply, please visit:
http://jobs.tue.nl/wd/plsql/wd_portal.show_job?p_web_site_id=3085&p_web_page_id=216840&p_preview=Y&p_lang=EN
 
Please note: only direct applications via the TU/e career website will be taken into account.  Applications via the Philips career website will not be considered.