Jobs and Careers
Back to jobs|Dashboard
VR

PhD Researcher/Teaching Assistant Electric Vehicles

Vrije Universiteit Brussel
Belgiumfull_timeVerifiedPosted 4 Dec 2025

About the role

1 - Working at the VUB

For more than 50 years, the Vrije Universiteit Brussel has stood for freedom, equality and solidarity, and this is very much alive on our campuses among students and staff alike. 

 

At the VUB, you will find a diverse collection of personalities: innovators pur sang, but above all people who are 100% their authentic selves. With some 4,000 employees, we are the largest Dutch-speaking employer, in the private sector, in Brussels; an international city with which we are only too happy to connect and where (around) our 4 campuses are located. 

 

Add to this our principle of free research - in which self-reflection, a critical attitude and an open, creative mind around scientific and social issues are central - and you have a university that is fundamentally groundbreaking and pioneering in education and research. In short: the VUB all over again. 

 

Moreover, the VUB is a member of EUTOPIA, an alliance of like-minded European universities, all ready to reinvent themselves.

2 - Position description

The Faculty Social Sciences & Solvay Business School, Department Business Technology and Operations, Research Group MOBI - Electromobility Research Centre is looking for a PhD-student with a doctoral grant. 

 

More concretely your work package, for the preparation of a doctorate, contains: 


Research 

You start as a research and teaching assistant at BUTO and will work on research projects situated in the domain of electric vehicles. Your research will focus on socio-economic aspects, such as but not limited to, user acceptance, total cost of ownership, location modelling of charging infrastructure, business models, impact assessment. You will be responsible for project management. You will author scientific papers and present at international conferences to complete a PhD dissertation.

Teaching

You will help support quantitative courses in the field of Business Economics. These include courses such as Decision Analytics, Statistics, Operations Research. You will also assist in preparing and marking exams, supervising exams, and supervising master's theses.

 

The Electromobility Research Centre (MOBI) at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel has a strong tradition in state-of-the-art research on e-mobility and socio-economic analysis in sustainable mobility. MOBI is an interdisciplinary team, with over 120 specialists and expertise ranging from electric and autonomous driving, to innovative batteries, intelligent drive systems and energy management, power electronics and charging infrastructure. In addition, we develop knowledge regarding business planning and consumer behaviour, and we study the integration of electric vehicles into energy communities and smart grids.

 

The Business Technology and Operations (BUTO) department operates at the intersection of technology and management. Both in terms of research and education, our department mainly works on the following topics: mobility and logistics, electric and autonomous vehicles, sustainability, new technologies, innovation and entrepreneurship, manpower planning, geomarketing and data analytics. Impact is key to the group's research and education policy. Our students and researchers each work within their own domain and specialization on a better and more sustainable society.

 

For this function, our Brussels Humanities, Sciences & Engineering Campus (Elsene) will serve as your home base. 

3 - Profile

What do we expect from you?

 

  • You are a motivated researcher with a strong interest in new developments in the domain of electric and autonomous mobility and have a good academic track record, preferably in Business Engineering, Economics, Mathematics, Engineering or Computer Science with a strong interest in Business.

 

  • You have a passion for teaching and enjoy guiding students.  You are a team player. You are a good communicator and write and speak fluently in English and Dutch. You can work independently and collaboratively with internal and external partners. You are willing to attend project meetings and travel abroad for meetings and conferences. Knowledge of programming in R, Python or ArcGIS/QGIS is a plus. 

 

  • You have not performed any works in the execution of a mandate as an assistant, paid from operating resources, over a total (cumulated) period of more than 12 months.