1 - Working at the VUB
For more than 50 years, the Vrije Universiteit Brussel has stood for freedom, equality and solidarity, and this is very much alive on our campuses among students and staff alike.
At the VUB, you will find a diverse collection of personalities: innovators pur sang, but above all people who are 100% their authentic selves. With some 4,000 employees, we are the largest Dutch-speaking employer, in the private sector, in Brussels; an international city with which we are only too happy to connect and where (around) our 4 campuses are located.
Add to this our principle of free research - in which self-reflection, a critical attitude and an open, creative mind around scientific and social issues are central - and you have a university that is fundamentally groundbreaking and pioneering in education and research. In short: the VUB all over again.
Moreover, the VUB is a member of EUTOPIA, an alliance of like-minded European universities, all ready to reinvent themselves.
2 - Position description
The Faculty of Engineering, Department Elektronica en informatica, Research Group Electronics and Informatics: Research – Development - Innovation is looking for a PhD-student with a doctoral grant.
More concretely your work package, for the preparation of a doctorate, contains:
We invite you for a fully funded PhD position within the prestigious European Research Council (ERC) Consolidator Grant “Reinventing Multiterminal Coding for Intelligent Machines (IONIAN).”
Why cooperative perception?
State-of-the-art autonomous vehicles can miss a critical obstacle when their camera is blinded by sun glare, or their LiDAR beam is blocked by a truck. To reach level-4/5 autonomy, we need teamwork: nearby vehicles, drones, and roadside units must co-perceive their environment, sharing and fusing complementary sensor views in real time. Yet raw video and point-cloud streams are massive, wireless links are unreliable, and safety demands that information be both timely and trustworthy.
IONIAN tackles this bottleneck head-on. We will reinvent generative cooperative vision and semantic compression methods so fleets of intelligent machines can perceive the world robustly, efficiently, and in a trustworthy manner—even when individual sensors fail or are occluded.
Position Overview
As a doctoral researcher, you will forge a novel framework for cooperative perception by disrupting today’s most vibrant research threads in AI:
- Generative Diffusion & 3D/4D Scene Synthesis: Re-design diffusion and NeRF-style models so multiple agents jointly reconstruct a scene.
- Semantic-Aware Compression & Network Information Theory: Derive new rate–(task-)distortion–reliability bounds, design adaptive codecs that prioritise safety-critical bits, and close the loop between information theory and AI models for cooperative perception.
- Real-World Validation: Deploy and benchmark your algorithms on our autonomous vehicle, mobile robots, and UAV testbeds.
You will:
- Publish in CVPR/ICCV/ECCV, NeurIPS/ICLR, INFOCOM/ISIT and leading IEEE journals.
- Collaborate with top EU labs and industry partners.
- Mentor Master’s students and assist in graduate teaching.
For this function, our Brussels Humanities, Sciences & Engineering Campus (Elsene) will serve as your home base.
3 - Profile
What do we expect from you?
- Master’s degree in Electrical Engineering, (Applied) Computer Science, Applied Mathematics, or related field
- Solid grounding in machine learning, computer vision, signal processing and/or information theory.
- Hands-on experience with deep learning (PyTorch/TensorFlow/JAX).
- Interest in: deep learning for compression, diffusion models, cooperative perception or 3D vision.
- Strong programming skills; analytical rigour; excellent English.
Nice-to-Haves
- Publications in top-tier venues.
- Prior work on cooperative perception, generative AI, or compression algorithms.
- Experience with robotics, UAVs or autonomous vehicles.
- You have not performed any works in the execution of a mandate as an assistant, paid from operating resources, over a total (cumulated) period of more than 12 months.
The VUB wants to be a reflection of the society where everyone's talent is valued, regardless of gender, age, religion, skin color, migration background, disability and neurodiversity.
4 - Offer
Are you going to be our new colleague?
You’ll be offered a full-time PhD-scholarship, for 12 months (extendable up to max. 48 months, on condition of the positive evaluation of the PhD activities), with planned starting date 01/09/2025.
You’ll receive a grant linked to one of the scales set by the government.
IMPORTANT: The effective result of the doctorate scholarship is subject to the condition precedent of your enrolment as a doctorate student at the university.
At the VUB, you’re guaranteed an open, involved and diverse workplace where you are offered opportunities to (further) build on your career.
As well as this, you will also enjoy various other benefits:
- Extensive homeworking options, a telework allowance of 50 euros per month OR an internet fee of 20 euros per month;
- An open and informal working environment where attention is paid to work-life balance, and exceptional holiday arrangements with 35 days of leave (based on a fulltime contract), closure between Christmas and New Year and 3 extra leave days;
- Cost-free hospitalisation insurance;
- Full reimbursement of your home-to-work commute with public transport according to VUB-policy, and/or compensation if you come by bike;
- A wide selection of meals in our campus restaurants at attractive prices;
- Excellent and affordable facilities for sport and exercise, a range of discounts via Benefits@Work (in all kinds of shops, on flights, in petrol stations, amusement parks...) and Ecocheques;
- Nursery near campus, discount on holiday camps;
- The space to form your job content and to continuously learn through our VUB learning platforms and training courses;
- And finally: great colleagues with a healthy drive.
5 - Interested?
Is this the job you’ve been dreaming of?
Then apply, at the latest on 01/08/2025, via jobs.vub.be, and upload the following documents into one PDF and email it to [email protected]:
- Cover Letter (1–2 pages) – motivation and fit.
- Curriculum Vitae – education, publications, skills.
- Academic Transcripts – BSc & MSc.
- Research Statement (optional if covered in the cover letter).
- References – contact details of 2–3 referees.
Do you have questions about the job content? Contact Prof. N. Deligiannis at [email protected] or on +32 (0)2 629 1683.
Would you like to know what it’s like to work at the VUB? Go to jobs.vub.be, and find all there is to know about our campuses, benefits, strategic goals and your future colleagues.
Would you like more information about EUTOPIA? Go to eutopia-university.eu, and read more about the role of the VUB in the development of the EUTOPIA alliance.
