PhD Researcher Safe and Sustainable--Design Additive Manufacturing

PhD Researcher on Safe and Sustainable-by-Design for Additive Manufacturing

PhD Researcher on Safe and Sustainable-by-Design Frameworks for Additive Manufacturing in Repair and Remanufacturing for the NWA ADD-reAM project.

We are seeking an ambitious, forward-thinking PhD candidate ready to help steer the next generation of sustainable manufacturing. You will play a pivotal role in ADD-reAM (‘Additive Repair and Remanufacturing’), a cutting‑edge NWA ORC‑funded project that embeds repair and remanufacturing at the heart of future European industrial strategy — supporting the EU’s ambitions for circularity, resilience, and decarbonisation. The project brings together leading academic and industrial partners across Europe, including CML at Leiden University.

ADD-reAM unites universities, research institutes, and industry leaders to ensure that the next generation of additive manufacturing technologies enables repair and reuse by design, strengthening the EU’s circular manufacturing vision.

In this role, you will develop and ope rationalise the Safe and Sustainable‑by‑Design (SSbD) framework specifically for additive manufacturing (AM) repair and remanufacturing
, helping to shift AM beyond prototyping and custom parts into sustainable, circular production systems.

Your work will:

• Tailor existing SSbD frameworks and models to the particular technical and environmental challenges of AM repair and remanufacturing
  , establishing clear system boundaries and decision criteria that reflect the realities of metallic additive repair, polymer‑based refurbishment, and hybrid manufacturing workflows.
• Push the state of the art in prospective (ex‑ante) LCA and Social‑LCA (S‑LCA) by combining empirical industrial‑scale data with modelled scale‑up scenarios. You’ll address process variability, material reuse, energy‑demand uncertainties, and supply‑chain social impacts — crucial for projecting future performance of AM in circular settings.
• Fuse environmental, social, and safety dimensions into a unified decision‑support structure using Multi‑Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) and multi‑objective optimisation
  , revealing robust trade‑offs and Pareto‑efficient strategies for sustainable AM repair choices.
• Collaborate intensively with project partners to validate your framework on real‑world industrial case studies — delivering open‑source workflow tools, harmonised datasets, and transparent pipelines that guide safe, socially responsible deployment of AM in circular value chains.

Your research will cut across industrial ecology
, sustainability analytics
, and decision science
, and will directly contribute to shaping Europe’s transition toward circular, resilient manufacturing systems
. The expected start date is February 2026 (or as soon as possible thereafter).

Leiden University is situated between Amsterdam (36 km) and The Hague (15 km) and was founded in 1575, making it the oldest university in the Netherlands. It houses around 35,000 students originating from 112 nationalities, facilitated by approximately 8,000 staff.

The Institute of Environmental Science (CML) at Leiden University offers a vibrant and supportive community of scientists committed to the challenges of sustainability. CML distinguishes itself for its attention to professional development in coordination with the interests of its scientists. As such, there are plenty of opportunities to learn new skills, expand your knowledge, collaborate across disciplines, and experiment in a friendly environment fully embodying academic freedom across all career levels.

The core focus of CML is to perform research and education in the interdisciplinary field of Environmental Sciences. CML focuses on the sustainable use of natural resources and preservation of natural capital and biodiversity. CML has a culture of mutual support and collaboration between researchers. CML has two Departments:
Industrial Ecology (CML‑IE) and Environmental Biology (CML‑EB). Presently, about 150 fte (including postdocs and PhDs) are employed  further collaborates with TU Delft and Erasmus University in the Leiden‑Delft‑Erasmus Centre for Sustainability (LDE‑CfS), and with the Naturalis…