PhD natural language processing and machine learning for healthcare

Overview

About the project

The MediSpeech project aims to reduce administrative waste in healthcare by creating an open digital healthcare ecosystem for automated medical reporting. Nowadays, administrative tasks can consume up to 30% of clinicians’ working hours, diverting attention from patient care and contributing to physician burnout. The proposed solution uses speech recognition, natural language processing, and clinical decision support to transform the healthcare model into a patient/doctor-centered approach.

Would you like to know more about the different phases within the PhD trajectory? You can read more about this on this page.

About the role

We are seeking a motivated and innovative PhD researcher to join the MediSpeech project. This project focuses on developing cutting-edge technology to transform how clinical consultations are documented and analyzed. This role offers a unique opportunity to conduct high-impact research at the intersection of multimodal machine learning and healthcare. Your work will contribute to creating systems that automatically transcribe patient-doctor consultations and suggest relevant information for seamless integration into electronic health records (EHRs).

Furthermore, you will:
• Liaise with a network of partners of the MediSpeech project and tackle relevant healthcare problems using rich real-world clinical data;
• Have access to excellent high performing computing (HPC) facilities and strong support to publish the results of your work in the best clinical journals and scientific conferences and journals in NLP, ML, and artifical intelligence (AI);
• Have the opportunity to contribute to the mentoring of master’s students on topics related to your research.

Profile

You are a talented and highly motivated individual excited to join the MediSpeech project as a PhD researcher. Ideally, you have a strong background in machine learning, artificial intelligence, or a closely related field, with a passion for applying advanced technologies to solve real-world healthcare challenges.

Prerequisites for this position are:
• A master’s degree (or equivalent) in Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence, Data Science, Computational Linguistics, Biomedical Engineering, or a related discipline.
• Strong programming skills (e.g., Python, PyTorch).
• Experience with machine learning frameworks and methods, particularly in natural language processing, speech analysis, or multimodal learning.
• Familiarity with large language models (LLMs) and their applications.
• A keen interest in working on problems related to healthcare and clinical applications. Previous exposure to electronic health records (EHRs) or medical AI is advantageous but not required.

While not required, experience with high-dimensional and multimodal datasets (e.g., text, audio, images) would be helpful. Knowledge of uncertainty quantification, speech-to-text technologies, ASR systems, or audio signal processing is also a plus, along with an understanding of bias detection, fairness, and inclusivity in AI systems.

Moreover, an innovative mindset allows you to think creatively and tackle complex problems. Collaboration with interdisciplinary teams, including clinicians, engineers, and researchers, excites you. Your strong communication skills help you effectively share research findings with both technical and non-technical audiences. Additionally, excellent organizational skills enable you to manage all aspects of the project, from development to practical evaluation.

Our offer
• A flying start to your career in scientific research.
• Plenty of room for your drive to shape tomorrow’s healthcare.
• Working on large-scale and in-house research, with motivated colleagues from all over the world.
• You will be employed by Amsterdam UMC Research BV.
• A contract for 6 months with the prospect of extension for the duration of the project.
• Salary scale OIO: € 3.017 to € 3.824 gross per month based on full-time employment (depending on education and experience) and a year-end bonus of 8.3%. Calculate your net salary here.
• Holiday hours: 190,4 per year for fulltime and a possibility to save additional hours.
• Pension accrual with BeFrank, a modern, comprehensible and fairly priced pension.
• For >7 km each way, 100% reimbursement for public transport travel costs and, for private transport, €0.18 per km up to a maximum of 40 km each way.
• Do you prefer walking or cycling? Take advantage of our good bike scheme. Moreover, you will receive a reimbursement of €0.18 per km.

Watch this video with more information about joining Amsterdam UMC Research BV.

About the workplace

You will be appointed at the Department of Medical Informatics and the Biomedical Engineering & Physics department at the Amsterdam UMC, University of Amsterdam. You will have the opportunity to collaborate with colleagues in the departments of Radiology and Nephrology at Amsterdam UMC

You will be part of the NLP4Health Lab and will be supervised by dr. Iacer Calixto, dr. Alberto Testoni, dr. Azam Nurmohamed, and prof. Henk Marquering. Dr. Calixto is Assistant Professor in Artificial Intelligence and works on machine learning (ML) for vision and language, natural language processing, and artificial intelligence (AI) in healthcare. Dr. Testoni is a Postdoctoral researcher in Responsible NLP and ML for healthcare, with a focus on (multimodal) natural language processing. Dr. Nurmohamed is internist-nephrologist and chief medical information officer of Ammsterdam with special interest in digitalisation, data and AI. Prof. Marquering is professor in Translational AI, with a strong focus on computer vision for the analysis of and the valorization of AI methodologies to clinical practice.

Amsterdam UMC Research BV supports non-profit scientific research. In doing so, we provide researchers with everything they need to excel. Our principal investigators (PIs) and project leaders offer support in the field of project management, finance and human resources. In medical scientific research projects, legal support is also provided.

Watch the video to find out more.

Let’s meet

During the publication period, applications will be handled continuously. If the vacancy is filled, it will be closed prematurely.

The intended start date is ideally between 1 March and 15 April 2025, or as soon as possible thereafter.

If you have any questions about this position, please feel free to contact Alberto Testoni via .

For more information about the application procedure, please contact Rhiannon Sandfort, Recruitment advisor, via .

A reference check, screening and hiring test may be part of the procedure. Read here whether that applies to you. If you join us, we ask you for a VOG (Certificate of Good Conduct).

Internal candidates will be given priority over external candidates in case of equal suitability.

Acquisition in response to this vacancy is not appreciated.

Company:

Amsterdam UMC

Qualifications:

Language requirements:

Specific requirements:

Educational level:

Level of experience (years):

Senior (5+ years of experience)

Tagged as: Academia, Computational Linguistics, Language Modeling, Netherlands, NLP, Speech Recognition