Sleepless nights for the engineer

Humans spend about one third of their lives sleeping. They organize their time, work and relationships to meet the demands of sleep. Sleep and sleep quality is a synergy of psychological, physiological and physical conditions affects the quality of sleep. These conditions should not be considered apart. Scientists have, however, only recently begun to study the interplay of psychological, physiological and physical conditions on sleep. The Flemish government sponsors a multimillion project where Flemish psychologists, sleep specialists and engineers join forces to understand the sleep process, and eventually develop an innovative bedroom that automatically adapts to the needs of the individual user

M3-BIORES, a division of the faculty of Bioscience engineering of the K.U.Leuven, is one of the engineering teams within this consortium. M3-BIORES is one of the first to apply modern engineering techniques to the sleep process. This allows scientists to anticipate and improve an individual’s status in real time. The benefits to sleep, fitness and healthcare are potentially enormous. And we also believe our technology has the potential to improve the general population’s overall wellness, physical health and mental strength.

We are currently looking for a number of exceptional people to join our growing team in Leuven. Bio-engineers, civil engineers, physicists, mathematicians. Whatever your background, if you have a great CV, are handy with Matlab and want to rise to the top of your field through pioneering work in the application mathematic modelling techniques on the sleep process of humans, this is an opportunity unlike any other. Send your details, along with a strong motivational letter to Stijn.Quanten[ at ]biw.kuleuven.be - we look forward to sharing our vision with you and finding out how you can help us make it happen.

Profile of the candidate:
Bio-engineer, Civil engineer, Physicist, Mathematician, industrial engineer, … with an interest in the development and application of mathematic modelling techniques on humans.

Linguistics: Dutch, English

Software: Knowledge of Matlab is a necessity, possibly C, C++, MySQL, Oracle,…

Driving licence: desirable

Strong motivation for this application

Allowance: Fee of scientific assistant at University level

Job description:
The job embraces the analysis and modelling of experimental measurement data of sleep variables, to enable accurate prediction of the physical and mental preparedness for sleep at a certain moment. Here for, the individual is on-line monitored during sleep, whereby amongst other heart rate, sweating rate, light, noise, mattress support, posture, food, etc are recorded. Because every human being reacts in a unique way, models that incorporate this individual character but remain a broad application basis, are chosen for this application.

For further information:

Dr. ir. Stijn Quanten
Afdeling M3 - BIORES
Faculteit Bio-ingenieurswetenschappen, K.U.Leuven
Kasteelpark Arenberg 30, 3001 Heverlee
Tel.: 016/32.17.28 of 32.14.36
Fax: 016/32.14.80

E-mail: Stijn.Quanten[ at ]biw.kuleuven.be
Web: www.m3-biores.be