Ingrid Toftaker

The Department of Production Animal Clinical Sciences at the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, Norwegian University of Life Sciences (NMBU), offers a 3-year PhD scholarship focused on Bayesian modelling of disease occurrence. This position is part of the Trash‑To‑Treasure project, which aims to address challenges in using secondary data for disease estimation in animals. Secondary data often suffer from selection and misclassification bias, but this project seeks to develop and apply advanced Bayesian statistical frameworks to estimate true disease occurrence from imperfect, biased, and noisy data. The methods will be tailored to pigs, cattle, and dogs, providing more reliable information for decision-making in animal health. As a PhD student, you will join both the Veterinary Epidemiology Research Group and the Research Group for Bioinformatics and Applied Statistics at NMBU. You will also have a research stay at the University of Copenhagen, collaborating with the Epidemiology and Disease Control Research Group. The project is linked to a larger initiative developing new diagnostic tools for pathogens in pigs, with additional affiliation to researchers in Sandnes. Supervisors include Ingrid Toftaker, Esben Østergaard Eriksen, Aliaksandr Hubin, Matt Denwood, Marit Gaastra Maaland, and Marianne Oropeza‑Moe, offering expertise in veterinary epidemiology, Bayesian modelling, machine learning, and statistical programming. Main tasks involve applying Bayesian latent class modelling to estimate diagnostic sensitivity and specificity of novel tests for pathogens causing lameness in pigs, cleaning and wrangling register data, estimating prevalence of M. hyosynoviae in Norwegian pigs, further developing the statistical framework with machine learning, and applying it to simulated and real-world data from health recording systems in dogs and cattle. The position also includes writing manuscripts for international journals, preparing a PhD thesis, presenting research at conferences, and completing required coursework. Applicants must have a master's degree, cand.med.vet. degree, or equivalent in a relevant field (statistics, data science, machine learning, epidemiology, public health, veterinary science, or animal science), a strong academic background, proficiency in English, and experience with advanced statistical analysis and programming in interpreted languages. Advantageous qualifications include proficiency with statistical software, programming in compiled languages, experience with software development and version control, Bayesian statistics, stochastic modelling, validation of statistical methods, epidemiological methods, register data, research experience, and knowledge of animal populations and biology. Personal qualities such as independence, critical thinking, analytical skills, openness to feedback, and collaborative skills are emphasized. The position is placed in position code 1017 PhD Fellow, with a salary range of NOK 550,800 – 660,000. Seniority promotion is possible, and grant-funded travel abroad may be expected. Admission to a PhD program at NMBU is a prerequisite. The research is associated with the project 'Contributions to Animal Welfare in Pig Production: Developing and employing Diagnostic Tools for investigations of Pathogens associated with Lameness.' Employment follows national guidelines for PhD scholars. To apply, submit your application electronically via the Jobbnorge link, including a motivation letter, CV (entered in Jobbnorge's form), certified academic diplomas and certificates, English translations if needed, diploma supplement for foreign education, documentation of English proficiency, and names/contact information for two references. Applications not submitted electronically by the deadline will not be considered. The deadline is May 23, 2026. For questions, contact Associate Professor Ingrid Toftaker at [email protected]. More information about NMBU and the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine is available at www.nmbu.no/en.