MSCA-PF: Joint application at the University of Granada. Department of Civil Engineering

Professor Juan de Oña, from the Department of Civil Engineering at the University of Granada, welcomes postdoctoral candidates interested in applying for a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellowships (MSCA-PF) in 2021 at this University. Please note that applicants must comply with the Mobility Rule (more information about the 2020 call: http://sl.ugr.es/0aNV, the 2021 call is not yet open).

Brief description of the institution:

The University of Granada (UGR), founded in 1531, is one of the largest and most important universities in Spain. With over 60.000 undergraduate and postgraduate students and 6.000 staff. UGR offers a total of 89 degrees, 110 master’s degrees and 28 doctoral programmes through its 123 departments and 27 centers. Consequently, the UGR offers one of the most extensive and diverse ranges of higher education programmes in Spain.

The UGR has awarded with the "Human Resources Excellence in Research (HRS4R)", which reflects the UGR’s commitment to continuously improve its human resource policies in line with the European Charter for Researchers and the Code of Conduct for the Recruitment of Researchers. UGR is also a leading institution in research, located in the top of Spanish universities by a variety of ranking criteria, such as national R&D projects, fellowships awarded, publications, or international funding. UGR is one of the few Spanish Universities listed in the Shanghai Top 500 ranking - Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) (http://sl.ugr.es/0bsW). The UGR is amongst the 201-300 first universities of the world, between 2nd-5th position of Spanish universities and number 1 in the Andalusian Region in the Shanghai Top 500 ranking. Specialties at UGR that stand out are Library & Information Science (position 32) and Food Science & Technology (position 36). Moreover, the UGR is also situated amongst the first 100 universities in Mining & Mineral Engineering between (76th-100th position), in Mathematics (between 76th-100th position) and in Hospitality & Tourism Management (between 76th-100th position). The edition of the ARWU places the UGR in 201-300th position in the world and as the 4th highest ranked University in Spain, reaffirming its position as an institution at the forefront of national and international research.

Additionally, the UGR has 8 researchers at the top of the Highly Cited Researchers (HCR) list in Computer Sciences & Engineering (position 101-150). It is also well recognized for its web presence (http://sl.ugr.es/0a6i), being positioned at 43th place in the top 200 Universities in Europe.

Internationally, we bet decidedly by our participation in the calls of the Framework Programme of the European Union. For the duration of the last two Framework Programmes, the UGR has obtained a total of 67 projects, with total funding of 18.029 million euros, and for H2020, 118 projects with total funding around 29.115 million euros.

Brief description of the Centre/Research Group:

TRYSE is a multidisciplinary research group, formed by civil engineers, science computing engineers, statisticians and sociologists, whose main lines of research are focused on the analysis, interpretation and prediction of human behaviour in different areas of transport; in particular, in the areas of public transport, transport safety, and intelligent transport systems. Recent activities have focused on how to treat Big Data in all this fields using the most appropriate methodologies for each problem (e.g., bayesian networks, neural networks, cluster analysis, decision trees, fuzzy logic, structural equation models, etc.).

For further information, please visit: https://www.researchgate.net/lab/TRYSE-Lab-Juan-De-Ona).

Project description:

One of the strategic lines of any sustainable mobility programme at the cities and metropolitan areas is to promote alternative modes of transport in detriment of the private vehicle use, such as the public transport and the active modes (walking, cycling and so on.). In order to encourage the use of public transport, the quality of these services emerges as a very important issue to attract and retain more and more users.

Numerous researchers have investigated about this service quality perceived from the transit users’ perspective, but only few of them have considered the private vehicle users point of view, which is essential for understanding their motivations and concerns and, in this way, being able to capture their attention towards this more sustainable mode of transport.

In addition to service quality, other factors could stimulate the modal shift of these private vehicle users to the public transport. These factors are: their involvement towards public transport, their satisfaction, their behavioural intentions, etc.

The Transport and Safety Group research group has a deep background on the perception travel behaviour, and on different qualitative and quantitative methods for collecting and analysing subjective data. Moreover, different machine learning algorithms appropriated for this type of Big Data and advance statistical techniques (e.g. structural equation modelling) could be applied for this research.

Research Area:

• Social Sciences and Humanities (SOC)

For a correct evaluation of your candidature, please send the documents below to Professor Juan de Oña (jdona@ugr.es):

• CV
• Letter of recommendation (optional)