PhD Candidate

PhD Candidate
PhD Candidate

Published	Deadline	Location
24 Mar	5 May	Heerlen

Job description

Dr. Tim Huygh and prof. dr. Arno Nuijten are seeking a full-time PhD student for a wonderful PhD project with the goal of informing directors and executives of organizations in a richer way about cyber risks. This PhD project has the challenging subtitle: 'beyond the fifty shades of orange' and has high practical relevance.

Does the following situation sound familiar to you? You are driving and suddenly the “check engine” light on your car’s dashboard lights up. You quickly check the user’s manual, which tells you to go to the garage as soon as possible to have it checked. So, what do you do? Do you indeed go to the garage as soon as possible, or do you still finish your trip first? How bad is the situation really? And how bad can the situation potentially get if you ignore the warning for now? And how does the fact that this is not the first time that this problem has occurred influence your decision-making, especially if the previous time the mechanic did simply “reset” the warning signal because nothing was wrong with the engine?

How do you deal wisely with these kinds of risk warnings? Our own behavior and biases can of course heavily influence our decision-making. Not everyone interprets that orange “check engine” light the same way. Moreover, things usually go well until one time it goes badly wrong.

Just like us in our car, directors and executives of organizations also have access to dashboards with information about many things, including cyber risks (often in the form of traffic light reports), that are potentially ambiguous or open to interpretation. It can be information about risks that usually go well until one time when things go badly wrong. Just like us in our car, directors and executives are expected to make wise decisions based on that information so that their organizations become and remain “cyber resilient”.

As full-time PhD student, you will investigate what goes wrong, or can potentially go wrong, when cyber risks are communicated in color or traffic light reports, and will look for a richer language or tool to better interpret the behavioral component of cyber risks. In short, during this project, you will contribute to the resilience of organizations in the context of cyber risks. This also makes this PhD position a unique learning environment and opportunity for a candidate who wants to develop unique and relevant knowledge in the context of cyber risk and cyber resilience, that can later on be leveraged in a position as (IT) risk manager, information security manager, or consultant.

The candidate is also expected to participate for 10 to 15% of his/her time in educational activities within our education. Also, valorisation activities form a considerable part of the daily activities of the candidate.

Specifications

• max. 38 hours per week
• Heerlen View on Google Maps

The Open Universiteit (OU)

Requirements

• You hold a completed academic master's degree in information science and/or management science or behavioural economics;
• You have a demonstrable affinity with (qualitative/quantitative) academic research;
• You have an interest in the behavioural perspective of information security management, organizational learning, and management;
• You have excellent collaboration skills;
• You can work in a team as well as independently;
• You have very good communication skills (writing, presenting and speaking) in both English and Dutch;
• You have an analytical mind and are able to provide creative input and ideas;
• You are results-oriented with a proactive attitude.

Conditions of employment

Fixed-term contract: temporary position for 4 years.

The PhD candidate will be appointed for a period of 15 months. The appointment will be extended to 4 years when progress and performance are good.

Salary
The salary is determined in accordance with salary scale P of Appendix A of the Collective Labour Agreement of Dutch Universities and amounts to € 2.541,= gross per month upon commencement, in case of full employment.

The Open Universiteit provides good secondary benefits such as training, mobility, part-time employment, hybrid work and paid parental leave.

Employer
The Open Universiteit

Flexible studying anywhere in the Netherlands and (Belgium) Flanders
The Open Universiteit is the part-time university in the Netherlands. Students follow personalised and activating academic distance education and disciplinary research is carried out within the various fields of science. Students can complete bachelor and master programmes, but also shorter programmes. The characteristics of education are openness, flexibility and quality (see www.ou.nl/rankings). The Open Universiteit has over 17,000 students and more than 750 employees. The OU has branches in the Netherlands and Belgium (see www.ou.nl/studiecentra). The main office is located in Heerlen.

The latest technologies and educational insights are applied both in the bachelor's and master's programmes and courses and in projects and programmes with partners. Nationally and internationally, the OU plays an important role in the innovation of higher education. Education is interwoven with research, which also ensures that the current state of science is incorporated. The Open Universiteit invests not only in disciplinary research in nine scientific fields, but also in research in a multidisciplinary programme: Innovating for resilience

Department
Faculty of Science

The faculty of Science is one of the six faculties of the Open Universiteit. Education, research and valorisation are the main tasks. The faculty offers academic bachelor and master programmes in the fields of Computer Science, Information Science, Environmental Sciences, and an Artificial Intelligence master programme is currently under development. The faculty’s research programme focuses on Innovating for Resilience. Furthermore, the faculty is partner in the Community for Actionable Research of the OU (CAROU). The faculty has Ph.D.-students who conduct research on various current topics within the research programme. As a result of the interdisciplinary focus on education and research, as well as the close link with practice, work at our faculty provides many innovative and challenging opportunities for entrepreneurial researchers.

Department of Information Science
The Department of Information Science has approximately 23 employees (19 FTE) and consists of enthusiastic and ambitious faculty-researchers. The research mission of the department is to promote the use of information systems for the value creation of organizations, networks and society as a whole. We focus on the subfields of strategic design, governance and business processes and also collaborate in the framework of the OU-wide research programs "Safe City" and "Learning and Innovation in Resilient Systems". The academic bachelor's and master's degree programs, which are provided (largely online) by the department, are well regarded by our students and regularly receive awards for the quality of teaching. The courses we offer also incorporate the latest educational technologies and insights, as evidenced by the department's active contribution to university-wide educational innovation projects.

Additional information

For more information about this vacancy you can contact Tim Huygh ([email protected] ), and Arno Nuijten ([email protected] ). You can also request a more detailed PhD proposal text, that discusses the content of the project more in depth, via these e-mail addresses.

NOTICE: please note that the email address mentioned above is provided for obtaining information about this vacancy.

For additional information about the OU and the faculty of Science, please visit our website www.ou.nl and  https://www.ou.nl/en/faculteit-betawetenschappen .

 

Working at the OU

The Open Universiteit is specifically dedicated to online education and research. The educational programme is structured in such a way that it enables you to study part-time.

Learn more

Apply for this job
Apply for this job

Fill in the form to apply for this job via AcademicTransfer. We will send your application to the employer.

Personalia
First name
Last name
E-mail
documents(2 / 3)
Attachments
Attachments

Upload at least one document, i.e. a cover letter and/or CV. Please note: use an alternative like a cloud service for large files as employers might refuse e-mails that exceed their companies policy.

Upload at least one document, i.e. a cover letter and/or CV. Please note: use an alternative like a cloud service for large files as employers might refuse e-mails that exceed their companies policy.
Only the following file extensions are allowed: pdf, doc, docx, jpg, jpeg and png.
The combined size of the documents must not exceed: 19.0 MB.
File added
Add a file
Drag file here or browse
File added
Add a file
Drag file here or browse
File added
Add a file
Drag file here or browse
File added
Add a file
Drag file here or browse
File added
Add a file
Drag file here or browse
File added
Add a file
Drag file here or browse
File added
Add a file
Drag file here or browse
File added
Add a file
Drag file here or browse
File added
Add a file
Drag file here or browse
File added
Add a file
Drag file here or browse
File added
Add a file
Drag file here or browse
File added
Add a file
Drag file here or browse
File added
Add a file
Drag file here or browse
File added
Add a file
Drag file here or browse
File added
Add a file
Drag file here or browse
File added
Add a file
Drag file here or browse
File added
Add a file
Drag file here or browse
File added
Add a file
Drag file here or browse
File added
Add a file
Drag file here or browse
File added
Add a file
Drag file here or browse
Add more files
Apply now (3 / 3)
Submit application
Application procedure

Please apply for this position by sending an email stating the vacancy number to: [email protected] .