PhD position in statistical data modelling of delirium in intensive care unit patients (100 %)

School: Life Sciences und Facility Management
Starting date: 01.06.2026 or upon mutual agreement

• Do research with the goal of a better understanding of delirium disease onset and progression in intensive care unit (ICU) patients and various aspects such as e.g. delirium subtypes, biomarkers, prediction, management, and outcome to improve patient care.
• Using probabilistic and time-series models and other data science approaches to analyse high-dimensional multi-modal data of ICU patients suffering from delirium for prediction and improved causal disease understanding.
• Perform research under the guidance from both ZHAW (Georg Spinner, Sven Hirsch) and University of Zurich researchers (Reinhard Furrer) and deliver useful tools for clinical usage.
• Analyse data from the University Hospital Zurich ICU of heterogeneous sources (e.g. sensors, clinical records, clinical score assessments etc.) and compare it with public ICU datasets
• Publish results and attend international conferences.
• Collaborate interdisciplinary and internationally.
• Support with teaching duties of a reasonable amount.

• Degree in (bio-)statistics, mathematics, computer science, physics, (biomedical) engineering, (bio-) medicine or a related subject
• Interest in applying statistical and data science methods to the medical field
• Intrinsic motivation for medical research
• High level of independence and dedication
• Knowledge of programming languages such as e.g., R, Python, or other programming languages

Some initial research experience and/or achievements are advantageous but not mandatory.

Zurich University of Applied Sciences ZHAW is one of Switzerland's largest multidisciplinary universities of applied sciences, with over 14'000 students and 3'400 faculty and staff.

ZHAW is committed to gender-mixed and diverse teams in order to promote equality, diversity and innovation.

Our research group has been actively collaborating on probabilistic modelling with the involved researchers from University of Zurich and on ICU data analysis from the data science team at the ICU of the University Hospital Zurich for several years.
Many further cooperations with national and international partners exist, including both clinical researchers and researchers in statistics & data science.