PhD position specialized in statistical modeling of long-term survival and cure.

Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam is offering a fully funded, four-year PhD position in statistics on survival analysis and extreme value theory, as part of the NWO-funded project “Seeing beyond the study duration: extreme value theory for long term survival and cure chances”.

Your function

This project will develop statistical methods and theory for analysing time-to-event data when a fraction of the population is immune to the event of interest (‘cured’). For example, in oncology the event of interest is cancer relapse/death, and the cured patients after treatment will never experience the event. However, in absence of a lifetime follow-up, cured patients cannot be distinguished from the uncured ones who do not show signs of the disease.

A major constraint of most existing methods for cure models is the sufficient follow-up assumption, i.e. the study duration should be longer than the time span of possible events, which is rarely satisfied in practice. In this project, methods will be developed that relax this assumption by making use of extreme value theory (EVT) to extrapolate beyond the study duration. EVT has been well established for tail modeling and statistical inference on rare events that lie outside the range of the available data. Applications are foreseen in several fields, with a focus within this project on oncology and credit scoring for default prediction.

As a PhD candidate, you will join a collaborative team of two PhD candidates and two senior researchers, Dr. Juan Cai (VU Amsterdam) and Dr. Eni Musta (University of Amsterdam), who will also be your supervisors. Your research will center on developing cutting-edge estimation approaches for the cure rate and the survival time of the uncured depending on covariates such as risk or prognostic factors and treatments. Your work will focus on developing statistical learning approaches that allow for high-dimensional covariates and a non-linear dependence response, supported by theoretical guarantees on the accuracy of the method.

The project is expected to start in

February 2027

, although the exact start date is negotiable.

Your duties

• Conduct research within the specified project, including development of statistical methodology and theory, implementation of new methods in R, simulation studies, and real data applications
• Disseminate research findings through publications in academic journals and presentations at international conferences
• Participate in relevant seminars and engage in research collaborations locally and/or internationally
• Participate in the School of Business and Economics PhD training program
• Complete and defend a PhD thesis within the four-year appointment duration
• Contribute to the department’s educational programmes (0.2 FTE) by teaching tutorials and supervising undergraduate students

Your profile

• You should have a Master’s degree in statistics, probability, or econometrics, to be completed before the start of the project
• You should have a strong interest in statistical theory, methodology, and implementation
• You should have excellent programming skills in R/Python
• You should be proficient in English with strong academic writing skills
• You should be highly motivated and committed to your research, able to work independently, and willing to collaborate with team members and other researchers

What do we offer?

• a position for at least 1 FTE. Your employment contract will initially last 1 year. After a positive evaluation your contract will be extended with 3 years
• 8% holiday allowance and 8.3% end-of-year bonus
• contribution to commuting expenses
• optional model for designing a personalized benefits package
• a wide range of sports facilities which staff may use at a modest charge

About us

Department of Spatial Economics

The Econometrics and Data Science department aims at pushing the academic frontier in methodology development for quantitative, statistical modeling of data, ranging from machine learning methods to more traditional statistical and econometric techniques.

The department is driven by science with purpose, publishing at the highest level in top international journals in the field and collaborating with outside partners to link academic advancement with real-world problems.

The department participates in the Tinbergen Institute, one of Europe’s leading graduate schools and research institutes in economics, econometrics and finance.

School of Business and Economics

We at the School of Business and Economics (SBE) at VU Amsterdam bring together socially relevant teaching and research in the areas of business administration and economics. We focus on real-life issues that have a huge impact on society, economics and ecology: from robotics to big data, and from job market participation to change management.

Are you interested in joining SBE? You will work in a stimulating, dynamic and international environment with motivated colleagues dedicated to helping society make informed choices.

Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam

Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam stands for values-driven education and research. The university brings together open-minded experts who work across disciplines on sustainable solutions with social impact, while fostering a safe, respectful and inspiring environment for education and research.