Applicants are invited for a PhD fellowship/scholarship at Graduate School of Technical Sciences, Aarhus University, Denmark, within the Electrical and Computer Engineering programme. The position is available from 01 September 2025 or later. You can submit your application via the link under 'how to apply'.
Title:
Industrial PhD position in transient electromagnetic (TEM) data processing and inversion using satellite remote sensing and physics-driven machine learning
Research area and project description:
This Industrial PhD project aims to advance the automation and reliability of transient electromagnetic (TEM) data processing and inversion by integrating physics-driven machine learning with contextual information from satellite imagery. TEM is widely used for non-invasive subsurface imaging, however, current workflows remain dependent on manual inspection and expert interpretation, particularly in urban environments or when data are affected by induced polarization (IP) effects.
The project addresses three key scientific challenges:
(1) Automatically detecting artefacts caused by man-made infrastructure, such as buried cables and buildings, which can corrupt TEM signals.
(2) Identifying and processing TEM data affected by IP effects, which are difficult to spot even by trained specialists.
(3) Modelling TEM-IP data while resolving parameter equivalences, where multiple subsurface models can produce similar responses.
To solve these challenges, the project is structured in three work packages. WP1 will develop deep learning segmentation models trained on satellite data (e.g., Sentinel-1, Sentinel-2) and ground truth datasets to detect surface and buried infrastructure-related artefacts. WP2 will explore unsupervised autoencoder-based models to distinguish IP-affected TEM data to apply appropriate modelling schemes. WP3 will implement deep learning models, such as invertible neural networks (INNs) and variational autoencoders (VAEs), to enable efficient and physically consistent TEM-IP inversion, overcoming the problem of non-uniqueness.
The PhD candidate will be enrolled at Aarhus University and based 50% at the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Department of Geoscience, and 50% at Bentley Systems Scandinavia (https://www.bentley.com/, www.seequent.com/). The project includes a three-month international research stay for the PhD student at a leading university in the field. The PhD student will also be responsible for publishing results in high-impact journals and present at international conferences. The project supports the broader goal of enabling scalable and accessible subsurface imaging tools by reducing the reliance on domain experts and manual workflows, ultimately lowering barriers for wider adoption of TEM methods.
Project description: For technical reasons, you must upload a project description. Please simply copy the project description above and upload it as a PDF in the application.
Qualifications and specific competences:
Applicants to the PhD position must have a relevant master’s degree (120 ECTS) or expected to graduate by the time of application deadline from a master’s program in electrical engineering, computer engineering, computer science, geophysics, geoscience, physics, or a related field. The applicant’s thesis work must demonstrate specialization in at least two of the following areas: computer vision, deep learning, remote sensing, electromagnetic methods.
Experience with Python programming and scientific computing is expected, including proficiency with machine learning frameworks such as PyTorch. Prior knowledge of geophysical inversion methods or working with geophysical datasets will be considered an advantage.
Applicants must demonstrate strong analytical skills, scientific curiosity, and the ability to work independently as well as collaboratively in an interdisciplinary environment. Excellent written and spoken English is required.
Place of employment and place of work:
The place of employment is Aarhus University, and the place of work is Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Aarhus University, Bygn. 5125, Finlandsgade 22, DK-8200, Aarhus N., Denmark.
Since it is an Industrial PhD project, the Industrial PhD candidate will be employed in the company and enrolled at Graduate School of Technical Sciences (Aarhus). The Industrial PhD candidate is expected to split the time equally between the company and the university, i.e. work equally in both places – the actual scheduling will be decided within the framework of the project.
Contacts:
Applicants seeking further informatiion regarding teh PhD position are invited to contact:
For information about application requirements and mandatory attachments, please see our application guide. If answers cannot be found there, please contact:
How to apply:
Please follow this link to submit your application.
Application deadline is 10 July 2025 at 23:59 CEST.
Preferred starting date is 01 September 2025.
Please note:
Aarhus University’s ambition is to be an attractive and inspiring workplace for all and to foster a culture in which each individual has opportunities to thrive, achieve and develop. We view equality and diversity as assets, and we welcome all applicants. All interested candidates are encouraged to apply, regardless of their personal background. Salary and terms of employment are in accordance with applicable collective agreement.
