Doctoral fellow - Department of Information Technology

Technology » Telecommunications technology

Organisation/Company Ghent University Research Field Computer science » Other Engineering » Electrical engineering Technology » Telecommunications technology Researcher Profile First Stage Researcher (R1) Final date to receive applications 30 Sep 2026 - 21:59 (UTC) Country Belgium Type of Contract Temporary Job Status Full-time Is the job funded through the EU Research Framework Programme? Not funded by a EU programme Is the Job related to staff position within a Research Infrastructure?

No

Department TW05 - Department of Information Technology

Degree Master’s degree in Computer Science Engineering, Master of Science in Information Engineering Technology, Master of Science in Electrical Engineering, or a related field.

Occupancy rate 100%

Vacancy type Research staff

ABOUT GHENT UNIVERSITY

ABOUT THE EMPLOYER

Ghent University is a top-ranked University (ranked 90 worldwide according to the Shangai Ranking) located in Belgium. Employing more than 15.000 people, it is actively involved in education and research, management and administration, as well as technical and social service provision on a daily basis. It is one of the largest, most exciting employers in the area and offers great career opportunities.

With its 11 faculties and more than 85 departments offering state-of-the-art study programmes grounded in research in a wide range of academic fields, Ghent University is a logical choice for its staff and students.
Within the faculty of Engineering and Architecture, the IDLab research group ( ) performs research on
1) connectivity and
2) data science & artificial intelligence. In these research areas we focus on
1) foundations,
2) system design, and
3) applications. IDLab collaborates with many universities and research centres worldwide and jointly develops advanced technologies with industry (R&D centers from international companies, Flanders’ top innovating large companies and SMEs, as well as numerous high-tech start-ups). In order to support the research, IDLab created a unique research infrastructure used in numerous national and international collaborations. IDLab is also a core research group of imec, the world-leading research and innovation hub in nanoelectronics and digital technologies.

IDLab staff counts about 50 professors, 60 Post Doc researchers, 200 PhD researchers and 40 other staff members. These are spread over about 20 research teams.
The research for this PhD position will be conducted in the IDLab research cluster on Intelligent Wireless Networking ( ).

YOUR TASKS

PhD Position in AI-Driven Resilient RAN Optimization for 6G and O-RAN Architectures

JOB DESCRIPTION

This PhD research aims to investigate beyond state-of-the-art technology enablers for the next-generation cellular paradigm, called 6G. The main focus will be on Radio Access Network (RAN) optimization mechanisms within the Open-RAN (O-RAN) framework to meet strict and diverse requirements of emerging use cases in the 6G era.
Specifically, this position addresses intelligent radio resource management (RRM) as a key mechanism for maintaining resilient connectivity under adversarial and disrupted conditions. The research will investigate agentic AI and reinforcement learning-based control for adaptive spectrum usage, power control, scheduling, and multi-RAT coordination (integrating 5G/6G Terrestrial/Non-Terrestrial networks and Wi-Fi).
The focus is on developing decentralized, proactive, and self-healing RRM strategies that enable wireless systems to autonomously sustain performance and service continuity in the presence of active jamming, complex interference, partial infrastructure failures, and severe spectrum scarcity, without relying on static configurations or centralized control. The candidate will validate and evaluate the developed mechanisms utilizing simulation tools and in-house cutting-edge cellular/Wi‑Fi testbeds.

Your main tasks will include:

• Studying state-of-the-art techniques and benchmarks in the domain of next-generation O-RAN based wireless networks (including 6G both Terrestrial Network (TN) and Non-Terrestrial Network (NTN)(Satellite), and…