Five-year Postdoctoral Position on Bayes Factor Hypothesis Testing in Factorial Designs

Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University (RSM); Amsterdam; On-site; EUR 40.000 - 60.000; Full time

Job summary

A leading academic institution in Amsterdam is offering a five-year postdoctoral position focusing on Bayesian inference within an ERC Advanced project. Candidates should possess a PhD, experience in Bayes factor hypothesis testing, and proficiency in R programming. This role requires collaborating with a diverse team and contributing to the development of innovative statistical methods. A competitive salary package is offered based on experience.

Benefits

8% vacation allowance

8.3% end-of-year bonus

Qualifications

• PhD in a topic that involved Bayes factor hypothesis testing.
• Extensive experience in R programming.
• Ability to collaborate well with software engineers, students, psychologists, and statisticians.

Responsibilities

• Construction and elicitation of informed prior distributions.
• Critical assessment of default prior distributions.
• Organizing a many-statisticians challenge and workshop.
• Studying model-averaging, effect size estimation, and tests for interactions.
• Designing methods to overcome numerical challenges.

Skills

Bayes factor hypothesis testing

R programming

Collaboration with multidisciplinary teams

English proficiency

Education

PhD in relevant field

Job description

The Psychological Methods Unit at the University of Amsterdam offers a five-year postdoctoral position on the ERC Advanced project “Coherent Hypothesis Tests for Experimental Research” awarded to Prof. Eric-Jan Wagenmakers.

The five-year postdoctoral position is part of a larger team that seeks to develop, assess, and promote Bayes factor hypothesis tests in factorial designs.

Responsibilities

The envisioned projects will focus on the following activities related to Bayesian inference in factorial designs:

• Construction and elicitation of informed prior distributions;
• Critical assessment of default prior distributions;
• Organizing a many-statisticians challenge and workshop;
• Studying model-averaging, effect size estimation, and tests for interactions;
• Designing methods to overcome numerical challenges.

Requirements

You have a PhD in a topic that involved Bayes factor hypothesis testing. You can collaborate well with software engineers, students, psychologists, and statisticians. You are highly proficient in English writing. You have extensive experience in R programming.

What We Offer

This is a temporary employment contract for 38 hours per week, for the duration of 5 years. Depending on relevant work experience, the salary amounts to a minimum of €4,728 and a maximum of €6,433 gross per month (scale 11) based on full-time working hours (38 hours per week), excluding 8% vacation allowance and 8.3% end-of-year bonus.

You will join the Psychological Methods group, which provides ample opportunity for collaboration and exchange of ideas. Within the Psychological Methods group, you will work in the team of EJ Wagenmakers. One of the main goals of this team is to develop and promote Bayesian inference (and in particular Bayes factor hypothesis testing), and lower the bar for field-wide adoption by implementing the Bayesian methodology in JASP (www.jasp-stats.org).

If you recognize yourself in this profile and are interested in the role, we look forward to receiving your motivation letter and CV. You can apply via the red button until 19 October 2025. Interviews will take place in the two weeks after this closing date. In case of equal qualifications, internal candidates will be given preference over external candidates.