PDEng Trainee Smart Buildings & Cities at Eindhoven University of Technology

Fulltime, two year trainee position at the PDEng program Smart Buildings & Cities of the Eindhoven University of Technology. We are looking for candidates with a strong interest in energy in the built environment and a MSc degree in Architectural Engineering, Building Science, Building, Civil, Mechanical or Environmental Engineering, or equivalent. Knowledge from sustainability and user preferences analyses are essential and experience in Building Information Modelling and software development are beneficial.

Smart Buildings & Cities PDEng program

The Smart Buildings & Cities PDEng program wants to contribute to the transition towards smart, intelligent and sustainable cities where quality of life is high. This transition requires new solutions which can only be created through multiscale and transdisciplinary (design) approaches. The transition is a relevant theme for society (as reflected by the Horizon 2020 Societal Challenges formulated by the European Commission), building industry and university (consider the TU/e's Strategic Areas: Energy, Health and Smart Mobility and the TU/e's Smart Cities Program).

This requires technical designers who are able to work in a multidisciplinary environment and know how to communicate with different disciplines and stake holders. This PDEng program educates trainees to become those technical designers! Please note that this program is about technological design, i.e., the process of solving problems by means of a technological design, this in contrast to (PhD) research, which is the process of understanding problems.

After the two year program our trainees become technical designers with a broad technological understanding of energy related disciplines in the built environment (mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, building physics and services and ICT), who excel in their own discipline and who are able to work in multidisciplinary design teams, contribute to design issues outside their own core disciplines, integrate different technologies into new products and concepts, and who understand the commercial aspects of these innovative products and concepts.

Job description

The Department of the Built Environment of the Eindhoven University of Technology offers you a trainee position to follow a two-year post-master technological designer program, which leads to the degree of 'Professional Doctorate in Engineering' (PDEng). The SB&C program consists of two main parts:

1. Workshops. You will follow technical workshops in which you acquire knowledge concerning important concepts of disciplines other than your own (master) specialism. You will follow these workshops with other SB&C trainees (all with different master specialisms). The workshops increase your ability to effectively and efficiently communicate with these other disciplines in multidisciplinary design teams. Furthermore, you will follow workshops on design methods, entrepreneurship and professional skills.

2. Design projects. You will work on a design project with a group of SB&C trainees and you will work an individual in-company assignment (see description below). The latter is a design project in collaboration with a company and the university. You work within the company structure (facilities, office desk, computer and other required equipment are provided by the company). It is your main responsibility to manage and execute the project. You are supported by an advisor from the company and an advisor from the university. A business plan for implementation or marketing of the project or product is part of the final deliverables.

A significant part of the first year of the program is dedicated to the workshops, while the second year is mostly dedicated to the in-company assignment. Nonetheless you will start working on the in-company assignment from the start of the program. The in-company assignment related to this traineeship is described below.

Developments in the field of IT make it possible for more and more devices to be connected to each other via communication networks. Remote control of your thermostat or your home lighting system via your smartphone is already possible for several years. The expectation is that in the future billions of devices will be connected via the internet. We are talking about the Internet of Things (IoT). IoT makes buildings and cities increasingly smarter (smart cities). In the SmartONE project, we are investigating the possibilities of achieving a more integral systemic framework for IoT in smart cities. This project is being carried out by 9 PhD students and 2 PDEng students affiliated with TU Eindhoven supported by experts from KPN (Dutch Telecom Company) and professors from the TU Eindhoven. As one of the PDEng students, you will tackle the challenge of 'Traffic flow modelling and control in a smart city environment'.

Currently there are no integral solutions for smart mobility that are using the latest technologies within field of data science for optimization of (autonomous) mobility within smart urban environments. For this PDEng project you will be in charge of developing such integral solution. The aim of this PDEng project is to deliver a traffic management simulation platform based on the latest advancements in data science and AI. The developed platform will enable the integration of data from (autonomous) vehicles, IoT devices, and built environment with the state-of-art data science algorithms. From the simulations with this platform we expect to find new opportunities for development of predictive and control models which can be used in mobility related services in smart cities.

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