PhD Scholarship in Crowdsourced Delivery as an Activity for Sustainable Cities

If you are interested in integrated urban logistic systems, have a background in transportation, logistics, mathematical modeling, operations research and/or programming and want to establish a scientific career within this area, this PhD position is the right one for you. At DTU Management , you will conduct cutting-edge research in modeling and analyzing integrated urban transport systems that provide door-to-door mobility for passengers and goods. 

With the rapid global urbanization, mobility challenges related to the transfer of passengers and cargo are escalating in cities. European Union calls for innovative research to develop a sustainable solution to the growing urban population and logistic demand. Crowdsourced delivery is an emerging concept and has been promoted as a promising solution. In a nutshell, it is defined as outsourcing a delivery task and can benefit all involved stakeholders. The carrier can earn an extra income during his trip by picking up and delivering an outsourced parcel. On the other hand, the courier company lowers its operating costs and increases efficiency. The overall benefit for the city is reducing traffic, less congestion and minimised environmental footprints of deliveries as compared to existing sollutions. 

To facilitate the development of crowdsourced deliveries, this project aims at establishing and examining the concept of Crowdsourced Delivery as an Activity. The novelty lies in the fact that the delivery task is considered as a main or secondary activity in commuters' daily trip chain. The knowledge will then be created regarding the influential factors in motivating travelers to be a carrier of parcels preferable as a secondary activity so that the delivery tasks can be done in combination with the primary trip purpose. Courier companies can exploit the knowledge in providing the right incentive to the right people during their most suitable trips to engage as many citizens in delivery activities as possible. 

This is a joint project with Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e) under the EuroTech Alliance Program. It offers you a unique opportunity to collaborate with world-renowned researchers in TU/e under a secondment with a pre-agreed external research stay there at Professor Soora Rasouli’s group as well as Assistant Professor Feixiong Liao. 

Responsibilities and qualifications

Your overall focus will be to develop models and solution algorithms for optimizing crowdsourced delivery services and conduct experiments to validate the models and algorithm. You will work with scholars and industrial partners with expert knowledge within various aspects of the field. You will be rooted in the Network Modelling group, a part of the Division of Transport, Department of Management. The division also consists of research groups within transport demand, machine learning for smart mobility, transport economics and transport psychology. You will be part of an increased effort in the integrated urban mobility system with other PhD students and staff in the division. 

We expect you to have the interest and ambition to pursue PhD studies and experience working with mathematical modelling and programming. 

You must have a two-year master's degree (120 ECTS points) or a similar degree with an academic level equivalent to a two-year master's degree. 

Application procedure

To apply, please read the full job advertisement here: PhD Scholarship in Crowdsourced Delivery as an Activity for Sustainable Cities  

Application deadline:15 May 2022.   

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