Professor in exposure sciences and toxicology

Offer Description

We are looking for motivated and internationally oriented candidates with an excellent research record and with educational competence in the field of exposure sciences, toxicology and health.

Within the Biomedical Sciences Group at KU Leuven, the Department of Public Health and Primary Care conducts research in societal aspects of healthcare. Its members include experts in disease prevention, health protection, health promotion, quality assurance, health care policy, bioethics, health law, health economics, health communication, biostatistics, epidemiology, geriatrics and gerontology, nursing and midwifery, emergency medicine and general practice medicine.

Members of the Department conduct interdisciplinary research with a major impact at a national and international level. They also provide high‑quality education in various educational areas. In addition, they provide healthcare professionals and institutions with insights, concepts and techniques that enable them to respond optimally to the needs and expectations of the patient and society in the area of healthcare. Moreover, they seek to improve collaboration with clinical medicine and research, and they are closely involved in national and international partnerships.

The Department of Public Health and Primary Care offers a dynamic research context that stimulates interdisciplinary collaboration.

It is part of the appointment of the candidate to develop, within the domain of exposure sciences and toxicology, an international, competitive research program, to pursue excellent scientific results at an international level and to support and promote national and international research partnerships. The candidate must have a strong research profile or have the potential to develop one. In addition, the candidate is expected to have a multidisciplinary attitude and a willingness to cooperate intensively with other researchers and research units at KU Leuven [Environment & Health, Occupational and Environmental Hygiene and BREATHE].

The candidate:

• Is an excellent, internationally oriented researcher and develops a research program at the forefront in the field of exposure sciences and toxicology in preventive health, including lab based experimental work, epidemiological observational and interventional studies. The candidate has relevant experience, with research methods to investigate the health outcomes of chemical pollutants in the general environment and the workplace. These methods can include in vitro, in vivo and in silico techniques, biomarker discovery, NAM’s (new approach methodologies) to study (immune) toxicological mechanisms of lung or systemic diseases (such as occupational asthma, dust lung, auto‑immune diseases, cancer, etc).
• Strengthens existing research lines and brings complementary and/or additionally new expertise by working closely with the members of the research unit.
• Publishes at the highest scientific level journals in the field of toxicology, environmental sciences, lung research, immunology: such as Environment International, Environmental Health Perspectives, Particle and Fiber Toxicology, Archives of Toxicology, European Respiratory Journal, Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, etc.
• Develops an own research group.
• Supervises master students, PhD students and postdocs at a high international level.
• Aims to acquire competitive research funding from national and/or international agencies and submits effective research project proposals for this purpose.
• Establishes both within KU Leuven, national and international partnerships in the context of the research programme.
• Strives for excellence in research and provides a contribution to the international research reputation of the unit Environment and Health, Department of Public Health and Primary Care and KU Leuven.
• Has a pronounced interest in fundamental research, but also pays attention to the valorization and applications of the research, e.g. by networking with policymakers, employees and employers.

Although the position regards a research professorship at the start of employment, the candidate is expected to gradually contribute to…