PhD Student in Digital Cardiovascular Research at the Universitätsklinikum Hamburg Eppendorf 2026

The position is specifically designed as a training position with the opportunity to pursue a doctorate within the framework of the UKE’s PhD program.

Your role. You develop novel computational methods at the intersection of clinical data science and cardiovascular epidemiology – embedded in the creation of AF-BOLD, the consortium's landmark individual patient data meta-analysis combining 200,000+ patient-years of outcome data from 60+ trials. You design AI-driven approaches for harmonising heterogeneous clinical datasets – structured records, cardiac device remote-monitoring exports, digital ECGs, and wearable time series – and design quality assurance and anomaly detection pipelines for large-scale longitudinal patient data. You conduct analyses from this unique resource, contribute to integrating multimodal data into unified frameworks for machine learning and statistical modelling, and collaborate daily with clinical researchers, epidemiologists, and data engineers from across the consortium. This is a unique setting to build deep technical expertise while working on data and questions that directly shape patient care and regulatory decisions.

Table of Content

• Summary
• Benefits
• Requirements
• Application Documents
• Application Deadline
• How To Apply

Summary

• Application DeadlineMay 11, 2026
• Study LevelPhD
• SponsorUniversity Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf
• City to studyHamburg
• School to studyUniversity Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf
• Eligible CountryAll Countries

Benefits

• Attractive compensation according to TVöD/VKA
• Secure employment with meaningful work and respectful collaboration
• Comprehensive onboarding and open knowledge exchange within the team
• Extensive training and further education programs at the UKE Academy for Education and Careers
• Opportunities to contribute to our “UKE INside” personnel policy through cross-professional and cross-hierarchical projects
• Sustainable travel: subsidies for the Deutschlandticket as a job ticket, and Dr. Bike bicycle service
• Family-friendly working environment: cooperation on childcare, free vacation childcare, advice for employees with relatives in need of care
• Excellent health, wellness, and sports programs
• A wide range of dining options in our staff restaurant, with additional choices available at the “Health Kitchen” cafés, bistros, and an on-site supermarket

Requirements

• Excellent Master’s degree in Data Science, (Bio)Informatics, (Bio)Statistics, or a closely related quantitative field
• Technical excellence in Data Science and Data Engineering, demonstrated through an active GitHub profile, peer-reviewed publications, or a comparable project portfolio
• Proficiency in PyTorch, combined with hands-on experience in developing modern microservice- and API-based software while adhering to high software quality standards
• Solid experience working with relational databases (e.g., PostgreSQL), object storage (e.g., MinIO), and version control systems, including CI/CD pipelines with Git and GitLab
• Genuine curiosity about clinical cardiovascular medicine, intrinsic motivation, and a highly results-oriented mindset, and you should possess strong self-management skills. You can articulate and demonstrate all of these in your cover letter and interview.
• A strong intrinsic drive to advance the translation of scientific findings into clinical practice and patient care
• Excellent communication skills in both German and English; the ability to act as an effective bridge between technical and clinical partners

Preferred:

• Experience in analysing data from prospective or randomized clinical trials, ideally within cardiovascular medicine
• Familiarity with clinical trial data standards (e.g., CDISC SDTM/ADaM) and/or medical ontologies (e.g., SNOMED CT, LOINC)
• Demonstrable practical experience in applying and developing NLP- and/or LLM-based methods for information extraction from medical texts
• Proven hands-on experience in administering Linux-based research infrastructures, managing Kubernetes for microservice architectures, and workload automation

Application Documents

Please apply with your

• CV
• A motivation letter outlining your research interests in the project from both a technical and clinical perspective
• Reference projects demonstrating your technical excellence and a description of your own contribution to them
• The contact details of preferably three researchers who agreed to provide letters of reference.

Check also:
2026 Fully Funded Humboldt Research Fellowship
2026 Konrad Adenauer Foundation Scholarship

Application Deadline

How To Apply

• For more information, kindly visit the UKE webpage.