PhD in Explainable AI and Foundation Models CT Imaging

Organisation/Company Maastricht University (UM) Research Field Computer science » Informatics Computer science » Programming Engineering » Biomedical engineering Researcher Profile First Stage Researcher (R1) Final date to receive applications 15 Sep 2026 - 21:59 (UTC) Country Netherlands Type of Contract Temporary Job Status Not Applicable Hours Per Week 38.0 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

Welcome to Maastricht University!

Do you want to contribute to advancing AI in medical imaging? In this PhD position, you will conduct research on explainable artificial intelligence and foundation models for CT imaging. You will develop and evaluate novel methods, with a strong focus on methodological innovation, rigorous validation and clinical relevance.

PhD Candidate in Explainable AI and Foundation Models for CT Imaging

• Our goal: To develop novel AI methods for explainability in medical imaging, including diffusion-model-based approaches, and to advance foundation models for CT through model development, training, evaluation, and external validation.
• Your colleagues: You will join the Department of Precision Medicine at Maastricht University, embedded within GROW and the Faculty of Health, Medicine and Life Sciences. You will work in an interdisciplinary environment connecting artificial intelligence, medical imaging, and clinical translation.

As a PhD candidate, you will undertake a four-year doctoral research project leading to a PhD thesis. You will develop and evaluate new methods for explainable AI in medical imaging, with particular attention to the use of diffusion models for explanation and interpretation. You will also contribute to the design, training, adaptation, and external validation of foundation models for CT images.

We’re not looking for check boxes; we’re interested in who you are and what you bring. Do you recognize yourself in this?

You are an analytical and curious researcher with an interest in technically innovative research at the intersection of artificial intelligence, medical imaging and clinical translation. You enjoy tackling complex problems and working in an interdisciplinary and international environment, while taking ownership of your work and developing as an independent researcher. You approach research systematically and have experience developing well-structured, well-documented and reproducible research code and organising experiments in a way that enables results to be reproduced and your work to be understood and further developed by others.

You are motivated to further develop as an independent researcher and successfully complete your PhD within the appointment period.

• You hold, or will shortly obtain, a Master’s degree in Artificial Intelligence, Computer Science, Biomedical Engineering, Medical Image Analysis, Applied Mathematics, Data Science, or a closely related field.
• You have a solid theoretical and practical background in machine learning and deep learning, including experience developing, training and evaluating models, preferably for image analysis tasks.
• You have strong programming skills in Python, including the ability to develop and adapt code for machine-learning experiments, train and evaluate deep-learning models, and process and analyse experimental results. You have hands-on experience using a deep-learning framework, preferably PyTorch to develop and adapt code, train deep-learning models, and evaluate their performance.
• You have knowledge of, or a strong interest…