Internship | Enabling Interoperability of Heterogeneous Data Models for Data Sharing in Logistics

About this internship

The logistics and transport industry operates across multiple modalities—including maritime, air, and road—each governed by its own standards, data models, and regulatory vocabularies at national, European, and international levels. The fragmentation of these creates significant barriers to interoperability, data reuse, and automation across the end-to-end supply chain. By enabling the interoperability (both governance and technical-wise) of heterogeneous standardized data models, your work will help logistics stakeholders—especially SMEs—adopt plug-and-play data sharing interfaces without needing expensive consulting.

What will be your role?

You will design and implement syntactic mappings between existing standardized ontologies and data models for an example industry, in this case logistics and transport (L&T). Your work will also include identifying commonalities between the semantics of standardized L&T data models and, together with your supervisor, to define a syntax-free conceptual model of the considered standardized L&T data models.

Where appropriate, you will use state-of-the-art semantic web and knowledge representation approaches, including explicit mapping dictionaries and metadata frameworks (e.g., DCAT, SKOS, controlled vocabularies), to ensure transparency and long-term maintainability.

What we expect from you

The ideal candidate for this thesis project is in the final phase of a Master’s in Data Science / Industrial Engineering / Computer Science and has an interest in semantics and data engineering. This candidate enjoys pattern recognition, doesn't shy away from thinking outside the box, and has experience with data engineering, ontology engineering or knowledge representation.

We expect that you can start as soon as possible. The project is designed as a 6 to 9 month full time assignment (with some flexibility), ending no later than December 1st. To support effective collaboration, we expect it is feasible for you to work from the TNO office in Soesterberg or Eindhoven at least twice a week.

What you'll get in return

You will, of course, be properly supervised during your work placement and be given the scope for you to get the best out of yourself. Furthermore, we provide:

• A highly professional, innovative internship environment, within a team of top experts.
• A suitable internship allowance (615 euro for wo-, hbo- and mbo-students, for a full-time internship).
• Possibility of eight hours of free leave per internship month (for a full-time internship).
• A free membership of Jong TNO, where you can meet other TNO professionals and join several activities, such as sports activities, (work-related) courses or the yearly ski-trip.
• Use of a laptop.
• An allowance for travel expenses in case you don’t receive an OV-card.

TNO as an employer

At TNO, we innovate for a healthier, safer and more sustainable life. And for a strong economy. We find each other in wonder and ingenuity. We are driven to push boundaries. There is all the space and support for your talent and ambition. You work with people who will challenge you: who inspire you and want to learn from you. Our state-of-the-art facilities are there to realize your vision. What you do at TNO matters: impact makes the difference. Because with every innovation you contribute to tomorrow’s world.