The Department of Mathematics of Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam welcomes applications for a fully-funded, 4-year PhD position in applications of topology to the origins of life as part of the PRELIFE Consortium (www.prelife.originscenter.nl). The student will work on developing and applying tools in topological data analysis to study the earliest evidence of life on Earth, under the supervision of Renee Hoekzema at VU Amsterdam and Mark van Zuilen at Naturalis, and in collaboration with Inge Loes ten Kate (Utrecht University), Frank van Ruitenbeek (University of Twente), and Otto Sumray (Center for Systems Biology Dresden).

Together we will explore two fundamental questions: How did life emerge on Earth, and how common are the conditions elsewhere in the universe?  Our understanding of the origins of life could be greatly informed by correct interpretation of the environment and mode of life of the most ancient microfossils – if we are able to correctly differentiate these from abiotic structures with similar morphological characteristics.
Topological data analysis (TDA) is an upcoming field at the intersection of data science and mathematics applying advanced techniques from the mathematical field of topology in the study of shapes in data.
In contrast with machine learning techniques, the methods in TDA are generally traceable rather than black-box and do not require large amounts of training data. The aim of this project is to develop and apply the TDA toolkit to build a quantitative biogenicity test for populations of morphological features.