PhD Position: Autonomous Discovery and Control of Chemical Reaction Systems

Radboud University

Nijmegen, Gelderland, Netherlands
Full-time
Posted May 29, 2026

Job Description

This PhD position offers you the opportunity to work at the interface of systems chemistry, analytical science and machine‑learning‑guided experimentation. You will contribute to a research initiative aimed at mapping, understanding and controlling the behaviour in multicomponent chemical systems contributing both to advancing new synthetic processes and understanding prebiotic chemical complexity.

Your primary goal is to map the reactivity landscape of a diverse set of molecular building blocks. You will perform high‑throughput mixture experiments and characterise complex reaction outcomes using analytical methods such as NMR spectroscopy, LC‑MS, chromatography and automated data processing. These experiments will generate foundational datasets describing how molecular diversity and functional group variety shape emergent reactivity.

You will then design and construct minimal multicomponent reaction systems to study behaviours such as kinetic competition, autocatalytic ...