"Postdoc Responsible Innovation of the Synthetic Cell"

Job Description

The EVOLF consortium aims to create a living cell bottom up. This groundbreaking endeavour requires careful alignment with societal values and effective governance.

The development of a synthetic cell will produce groundbreaking knowledge on our understanding of life, which may lead to promising new applications, but may also give rise to novel risks. Therefore, this knowledge should be produced in a responsible way. This ambitious endeavor should also include dialogues with society, a dedicated approach for responsible innovation as well as philosophical reflections on our understanding and definitions of life.

The Ethics and Philosophy Group at Delft University of Technology is developing an integrated approach to address the pressing ethical and philosophical issues accompanying the synthetic cell. Therefore we are currently looking for a postdoc researcher.

The candidate will be collaborating with the wider Evolf consortium, consisting of 31 senior researchers from 5 different universities, encompassing disciplines such as nanobiology, biophysics and artificial intelligence.

This particular project aims to align the development of the synthetic cell with relevant societal values, such as safety and accountability. These will be embedded in guidelines for responsible innovation and for effective governance mechanisms.

In the project, the prospective Postdoc will:

• Identify societal values relevant to Evolf.
• Identify measures to address these values and to responsibility allocation within the consortium.
• Organise workshops to validate values and measures.
• Develop and implement governance mechanism to ensure RRI, both within the consortium itself as well as through exchanges with external stakeholders, including large public event to discuss measures for dealing with societal risks so far and to sophisticate them and establishing a platform to achieve international guidelines.

The postdoc will work closely with two PhD candidates. One of these candidates investigates the conceptualisations of life relevant for the creating life bottom-up. The other candidate focusses on how societal values can be embedded in the practice of creating a synthetic cell. The postdoc is expected to actively participate in the EVOLF consortium meetings.

Job Requirements

• PhD degree in a relevant field, such as Philosophy of Technology, Science and technology studies (STS) or Political Science.
• Preferably a combined background in biotechnology or biology and any of the above mentioned disciplines.
• Excellent communication and collaboration skills, preferably with scientists from the synthetic biology community.
• Good organisational skills.
• Research experience and writing skills demonstrated through a thesis, publications, or previous research projects.

Conditions of Employment

• Duration of contract is 2.5 years
• Temporary
• A job of 36-40 hours per week.
• Salary and benefits are in accordance with the Collective Labour Agreement for Dutch Universities
• An excellent pension scheme via the ABP.
• The possibility to compile an individual employment package every year.
• Discount with health insurers on supplemental packages.
• Flexible working week.
• Every year, 232 leave hours (at 38 hours). You can also sell or buy additional leave hours via the individual choice budget.
• Plenty of opportunities for education, training and courses.
• Partially paid parental leave
• Attention for working healthy and energetically with the vitality program.

Application Procedure

Are you interested in this vacancy? Please apply no later than 5 January 2026 via the application button and upload the following documents:

• CV.
• Motivational letter one page.
• An example of your writing.

You can address your application to Lotte Asveld and Jeroen van den Hoven.