At the Department of ICT and Natural Sciences (IIR)we have a vacancy for a PhD candidate in the area of social robots to support daily activities in older adults in a care home. The PhD position is linked to the Social Robots Lab in Ålesund, and the NTNU Health projectEXACTin Trondheim.
By the year 2030, more than 15% of the world population will be aged 65 years or more, and according to the Norwegian Institute of Public Health, by 2060 every fifth person in Norway will be aged 70 or over. As the life expectancy and population of older adults increase, so does the collective need for assistance and health care, resulting in new public health challenges. Especially critical is the situation for older adults that live in care facilities because of reduced physical and/or cognitive functioning. Here, increased effort is needed to ensure their inclusion and participation without adding to the workload of the staff. A promising solution to help overcome these challenges is the use of AI and robotics to deliver and support activities in several domains, such as physical exercises, cognitive games, social engagement, and entertainment. Increased participation in these activities can support their cognitive, social, and physical functioning and increase their quality of life, without adding to the burden of health care personnel. Therefore, the aim of this project is to identify the possible benefits and challenges associated with the use of social robots and develop a robot-based solution that can support the inclusion and activation of older adults living in care facilities.
This PhD project is a part of thePERSEUS doctoral programme: A collaboration between NTNU- Norway’s largest university, 11 top-level academic partners in 8 European countries, and 8 industrial partners within sectors of high societal relevance.
Within PERSEUS we will recruit 40 PhD candidates who want to contribute to a smart, safe and sustainable future. We are looking for highly skilled PhD candidates motivated to approach societal challenges within one of the following thematic areas:
- Big data and AI
- Digital Twins
- Internet of Things
- Extended Reality
- Information and Cyber Security
All participants in the PERSEUS network bring unique and important qualities with them into the doctoral programme. The PERSEUS PhD candidates will have the opportunity to collaborate with researchers in the partner institutions and in other project consortia, and benefit from these collaborative research and education activities.
As part of the PERSEUS team you will work alongside other highly motivated and talented PhD candidates and researchers. You will also have access to the knowledge base, state-of-the-art research infrastructure, and impact orientation of the partners in the team.
In addition to your education and development within the thematic research area, you will gain transferable skills within project development and management, science communication, research ethics, innovation and entrepreneurial thinking, as well as basic university didactics.
As a PERSEUS PhD candidate, you will be employed by NTNU. During your stay, you will do a 2–3 month international stay and a 1-2 month national stay with one of the PERSEUS partners. This will allow you to extend your network within academia and industry, and to learn about your research area from an academic, innovation, and societal perspective.
The duration of the PhD employment is 36 months
Starting gross salary is 491.200 NOK/year (equal to approx. 49.000 EUR/year by the exchange rate of February 2022)
We are looking for PhD candidates from all nationalities, who want to contribute to our quest to create knowledge for a better world. PERSEUS recruits candidates according to the EU’s mobility rule, i.e. applicants cannot have spent more than 12 months in Norway during the last 3 years, be within the first four years of their research careers and not yet be awarded a doctoral degree.
We believe in fair and open processes. All applications will be considered through a transparent evaluation procedure, with independent observers involved.
The position’s working place is at the NTNU campus in Ålesund, at the Department of ICT and Natural Sciences.
We look forward to welcome you to the PERSEUS team.
For a position as a PhD Candidate, the goal is a completed doctoral education up to an obtained doctoral degree.
You will report to the head of Department