PhD position Field research in Team Coordination Dynamics, Adaptation and Wearable Technology

Job description

The Human Performance Management (HPM) Group focuses its research and education on the topics of human performance, organizational behavior, and well-being to develop scientific knowledge and test theories that uncover and explain psychological processes contributing to high performance at the organizational, team and individual level. By examining the ‘human factor’ in operational processes, we aim to contribute to the interdisciplinary research of management psychology and applied psychology, focusing specifically on how the work and organization (re-)design contributes to high performance organizations in which employees work with high motivation, creativity, and pleasure. The HPM Group teaches courses at the undergraduate, graduate and PhD levels.

Resilient societies rely on teams providing rapid adaptive responses to crisis situations. But teams often have difficulty maintaining effective collaborative functioning during stressful events. Wearable technology applications represent a crucial opportunity for providing teams with valuable, real-time feedback to support their effectiveness, especially in high-stakes crisis environments. However, to date, the development of team-based wearable applications is hindered by a lack of scientific knowledge about what data are most meaningful and how to use them for team support and augmentation.

This PhD position is part of the NWO funded project ‘Coordination and complexity: Augmenting team adaptive performance in crisis situations with wearable technology‘. In this project, we will investigate team coordination dynamics across multiple modalities (i.e., physiology, speech, motion) to determine how specific coordination dynamics (e.g., synchrony, contagion), and the transitions therein, could be used for assessing, monitoring, and eliciting effective team functioning of work teams in general, and those operating in crisis situations specifically. Subsequently, human-centered design will be used for developing and evaluating ways to monitor and augment team functioning and performance in real-life crisis scenarios as well as team training contexts.
Your efforts will be primarily devoted to investigating how various forms of coordination related to previously established key behavioral, cognitive, and affective measures underlying adaptive team performance in healthcare and laboratory crisis scenarios.

The research will be conducted under supervision of Dr. Josette Gevers (intended 1st promotor), Prof.dr. Joyce Westerink (intended 2nd promotor), Dr. Sonja Rispens (co-promotor) and Dr. Travis J. Wiltshire (TiU; supervisor).

Profile

• The successful applicant is expected to:
• Perform scientific research in the domain described, resulting in a PhD thesis;
• Present results at (international) conferences;
• Publish results in scientific journals;
• Participate in activities of the project group, mainly in Eindhoven and Tilburg but sometimes on site with project partners at various locations within the country, most notably at partnering hospitals and game lab/studio.
• A small amount of teaching is part of the job too.

Job requirements

• A master’s degree (or an equivalent university degree) in a relevant area such as I/O Psychology; Organizational Behavior; Management Science; Cognitive Science; Industrial Engineering or a related discipline;
• Ability and motivation to work on a challenging topic related to teamwork and humancentered design/human factors with both fundamental and applied research aspects.
• Experience in (field) experimental research is a requirement, experience with wearable or physiological data a plus.
• Strong analytical skills. Competence for advanced statistical modeling (i.e., multivariate and/or multilevel statistics). Basic programming skills in R, Matlab, and/or Python (or a willingness to learn).
• Ability and willingness to collaborate in a multidisciplinary research team and with organizational partners;
• Good communication and project management skills; be a team worker, fast learner, autonomous, creative, organized and efficient.
• Good (verbal and written) communication skills in English; Understanding spoke Dutch is an advantage.

Appointment and salary

This PhD position will be employed at Eindhoven Technical University. We offer:

• A full-time appointment for a period of 4 years, with an intermediate evaluation after nine months;
• Gross monthly salary of € 2325 (first year) to € 2972 per month (last year); 
• A yearly holiday allowance of 8% and an end-of-year allowance of 8.3% (annually);
• An attractive package of fringe benefits, including holiday and end-of-year allowance, a personal development program for PhD students (PROOF program), and excellent sport facilities;
• The opportunity to perform cutting edge research in a large-scale science project involving TU/e, TiU, and several commercial partners bringing together  expertise of several senior researchers;
• Support for your personal development and career planning including participation in courses, summer schools, conference visits, research visits to other institutes (both academic and industrial).

Information and application
More information about the Human Performance Management group can be found HERE

Questions about these positions should be addressed to: Dr. Josette Gevers, phone 040-2474178, email: J.M.P.Gevers@tue.nl
Information about terms of employment can be obtained from Susan Opgenoorth, HR Advisor IE&IS (pz.ieis@tue.nl). Further information about Eindhoven University of Technology can be found HERE