Transform your infectious disease modeling expertise into direct public health impact. Your mathematical models and statistical analyses will inform national health policy, intervention strategies, and outbreak responses that protect the Netherlands' 17+ million residents—collaborating with one of Europe's leading infectious disease research teams and access to world-class surveillance and research data.

Job description
You will lead and coordinate complex modelling projects, both in terms of content and project management. In these projects you develop models to describe the spread of infections and the impact of control measures, with an international team of modellers and health economists. The models will help interpret data collected in the field, be tested against epidemiological data, and lead to a rational basis for calculating the costs and benefits of interventions. You will get the opportunity to advise policymakers and improve public health.
You will be expected to develop and maintain effective collaborations with epidemiologists, microbiologists, health economists and policy-makers in a multi-disciplinary environment. You maintain and expand a relevant network with stakeholders, collaborate with academic and non-academic institutions, conduct research, initiate and successfully complete modelling projects. You will communicate study results to relevant expert panels e.g. the Health Council of the Netherlands and advise policy makers. You are expected to monitor the scientific quality of models, advice, reports and manuscripts, and publish the methods developed and modelling results in high impact peer-reviewed scientific journals.

What Makes This Position Unique
• Working closely together with colleagues from different expertise, such as epidemiologists, mathematical modelers, medical specialists, virologists, immunologists.
• Direct contribution to advice that informs Dutch national health policy
• Access to excellent data sources
• Work with internationally recognized team
• International environment with English as working language
• Possibility to fulfill this position as a part-time secondment

Requirements
We are looking for someone with a PhD in physical sciences (physics, applied mathematics, computer science, mathematical biology, bioinformatics). Essential qualifications include on the one hand demonstrated scientific excellence in the field of infectious disease modelling and statistical analysis of infectious disease data, and on the other hand demonstrated leadership in modelling projects. You are a strong communicator, and have experience in communicating modelling results with research teams, stakeholders and policy makers. You have a professional level of verbal and written communication in English. As you will encounter policy documents written in Dutch, we require a Dutch reading level of at least C1.

The institute
At the RIVM over 2300 colleagues work together towards a healthy population living in a sustainable, safe and healthy environment. The center for Infectious Disease Epidemiology and Surveillance (EPI), part of the Center for Infectious Disease Control, collects data to follow the situation regarding infectious diseases in the Dutch population. For this purpose, EPI uses data from surveillance to obtain timely insights into trends and risks related to infectious diseases

The team
You will be part of the Department for Infectious Disease Modelling within EPI. This is an open, dynamic, international and stimulating group of infectious disease modellers, health economists, a research software engineer and a research project manager. The group includes 10 senior researchers, 2 postdocs, 5 PhD students. We are an international group with 20 members coming from 6 different countries. We have English as our working language. We maintain numerous collaborative links with external academic and non-academic institutions.

Location: Bilthoven / Utrecht
Working hours per week: 20-36
Salary: 5,212 euro – 7,747 euro gross, roughly equivalent to that of an associate professor in an academic appointment
Duration of appointment: 24 months, with possibility of a permanent contract, depending on funding and performance

Application
You can fill in your application via the website https://www.werkenbijdeoverheid.nl/vacatures/senior-modeller-infectious-diseases-RIVM-2025-0159 , and find the full vacancy text .