PhD Studentship in Development Katholieke Universiteit Leuven

A three year research position in a project with a clear intention to complete a PhD at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven within four years.

Title
Development of a health and welfare monitor for pigs based on image and sound analysis

Project description and tasks
Measuring of animal-based parameters can substantially contribute to health and welfare objectives that have been set by EU-legislation. Currently welfare is assessed by on-farm auditing, once or twice a year. However, this is time consuming and the question also arises whether the auditor is measuring animals under normal farm conditions. Compared to the current situation, automated recording of animal-based parameters has a number of advantages. Recordings can be made real-time and information can be send to a central database, reducing the need to send specialized personnel out to farms. Furthermore, behaviour parameters such as location, activity and sound of the animals can be measured more objectively and consequently these measurements can be used in a real time detection of behaviour patterns.

This project aims the development of a health and welfare monitor for pigs based on automatic detection of visual-auditive welfare related behaviour parameters. Vision and sound algorithms shall be used and further developed to calculate a limited number of characteristic parameters, such as animal position and movement, as well as sound intensity, duration and location. The dynamic variation of these parameters shall be related to specific behaviours, such as eating, drinking, resting. locomotion, social behaviour and sickness. Automatic detection data shall be validated using physiological indicators of health and welfare..

The research will be conducted in close collaboration with the Universiteit Gent.

Candidate profile
The candidate must have a master’s or equivalent degree in (bio, agricultural-) engineering (electrical, computer, civil, etc.), physics, mathematics or other relevant field.

The candidate should be willing to obtain a PhD degree in the field of bio-engineering. Reporting the project results in international peer reviewed journals is a major task.

The candidate must be able to speak and write English.

Working knowledge of MATLAB, experiences in image processing and/or mathematical modelling is requested.

Contact
For more information and application instructions, the candidates are requested to send a CV to Dr. Vasileios Exadaktylos, Division M3-BIORESm Faculty of Bio-Engineering, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Tel. +32-16-32.17.30, email. m3-biores.jobs[ at ]biw.kuleuven.be