Postdoc In cognitive Digital Twins and immersive co-design for fair urban spaces

Introduction

Are you passionate about shaping sustainable and fair cities through technology and citizen engagement? We are looking for a postdoctoral researcher to join an international research initiative that helps European cities reimagine and manage their public spaces to become more liveable, inclusive, and climate neutral.

The project brings together universities, municipalities, and industry partners across Europe to develop and test digital and participatory tools that support urban transformation. It focuses on integrating AI-supported design, digital twins, and data-driven management to balance mobility, energy, and public space use—while embedding fairness and inclusion in decision-making.

Within this framework, TU/e contributes to the development of immersive co-design environments that combine Virtual Reality (VR), Cognitive Digital Twins (DTs), and a Social Fairness framework. These tools will allow cities to visualise design alternatives, assess equity impacts in real time, and support evidence-based and fair decision-making for climate-neutral transitions

Job Description

As a postdoctoral researcher, you will work in an interdisciplinary team to develop immersive co-design environments that connect citizen experience, simulation data, and fairness evaluation. You will:

• Design and test VR environments that represent alternative configurations of urban space (e.g. street reallocation, mobility hubs, or green corridors).
• Identify and integrate relevant data streams from cognitive digital twins, ensuring that scenarios include measurable indicators for social fairness assessment.
• Organize and facilitate participatory workshops where citizens and decision-makers experience and evaluate different urban scenarios in VR.
• Collect and process data from these sessions, combining objective indicators (e.g., space use, accessibility, emissions) with subjective responses (e.g., behavioural, emotional, cognitive).
• Analyse and model the data to explain patterns of preference, acceptance, and perceived fairness across diverse city contexts.
• Feed insights and modelling results back into the digital twin environment to refine and validate future scenarios.
• Produce scholarly and practice oriented outputs including journal publications and policy briefs.
• Contribute to planning, documentation, monitoring, ethics/data management, and reporting to funding bodies.

You will be working with the Urban Planning and Transportation chair (UPT) chair within the Department of the Built Environment. The group conducts research on sustainable urban development, human-centered mobility, spatial planning, and decision support systems, combining analytics, behavioural modelling, and design-driven approaches to better understand and plan for resilient, inclusive, and climate-neutral cities.

Within the CORESpaces project, you will work closely with another postdoctoral researcher at TU/e from the Technology, Innovation & Society (TIS) group, who focuses on the Social Fairness Tool, ensuring that immersive experiences and fairness indicators are fully integrated.

Job Requirements

• Motivated researcher, with a PhD in urban planning, urban design, transport studies, computer science, environmental science, engineering or comparable domain.
• Proven research experience in the field of digital twins and/or immersive technologies.
• Experience with behavioural data collection (e.g., surveys, VR/XR experiments, stated choice experiments, participatory workshops).
• Experience with co-design, stakeholder engagement, or multi-partner projects is an advantage.
• Strong analytical skills and experience integrating quantitative and qualitative data.
• Have good programming skills (e.g. in Python, SQL, Java, JavaScript, etc.).
• Ability to conduct high quality academic research, reflected in demonstratable outputs.
• A proven ability to manage complex projects to completion on schedule.
• Excellent communication and collaboration skills, with experience or willingness in engaging diverse partners (academic, local authorities and NGOs).
• Excellent (written and verbal) proficiency in English, good communication and leadership skills.
• A team player who enjoys coaching PhD and Master's students and working in a dynamic, interdisciplinary team.

Conditions of Employment

A meaningful job in a dynamic and ambitious university, in an interdisciplinary setting and within an international network. You will work on a beautiful, green campus within walking distance of the central train station. In addition, we offer you:

• Full-time employment for 2 years.
• Salary in accordance with the Collective Labour Agreement for Dutch Universities, scale 10 (min. € 4,241 max. € 5,538).
• A year-end bonus of 8.3% and annual vacation pay of 8%.
• High-quality training programs on general skills, didactics and topics related to research and valorization.
• An excellent technical infrastructure, on-campus children's day care and sports facilities.
• Partially paid parental leave and an allowance for commuting, working from home and internet costs. 
• A TU/e Postdoc Association that helps you to build a stronger and broader academic and personal network, and offers tailored support, training and workshops.
• A Staff Immigration Team is available for international candidates, as are a tax compensation scheme (the 30% facility) and a compensation for moving expenses.

Information

Do you recognize yourself in this profile and would you like to know more? Please contact the hiring manager dr. Valeria Caiati, Assistant Professor, v.caiati@tue.nl. 

Visit our website for more information about the application process or the conditions of employment. You can also contact HR-Advisor, l.v.houten@tue.nl or +31 40 247 8269.

Are you inspired and would like to know more about working at TU/e? Please visit our career page.

Application

We invite you to submit a complete application using the apply-button. The application should include a:

• Cover letter in which you describe your motivation and qualifications for the position.
• Curriculum vitae, including a list of your publications and the contact information of three references.
• List of five self-selected ‘best publications’.

We look forward to receiving your application and will screen it as soon as possible. The vacancy will remain open until the position is filled.

Please note

• You can apply online. We will not process applications sent by email and/or post. 
• A pre-employment screening (e.g. knowledge security check) can be part of the selection procedure. For more information on the knowledge security check, please consult Chapter 8 of the National Knowledge Security Guidelines.
• Please do not contact us for unsolicited services.