Doctoral student in AI-powered Asset Health Indices for Smart Maintenance

How can artificial intelligence help predict equipment degradation and enable smarter maintenance decisions? At Chalmers University of Technology, you will explore this question by developing AI-powered methods for assessing and predicting the health of industrial assets. We are looking for a Doctoral student to become part of our team at the Division of Production Systems in the Department of Mechanical Engineering. Please join our innovative team and contribute to exciting research on Production systems, AI-supported condition assessment, and maintenance decision-making in a collaborative and dynamic environment. About us The Division of Production Systems works with the sustainability and competitiveness of industrial production systems. The research area is system-oriented and requires knowledge about both the system as a whole and its separate components, for example humans, automation, and processes. The research highlights the different stages of a production system’s life cycle, i.e. planning, design, commissioning, operation, maintenance and reuse. Methods and research findings are generic, with applications within various industries, such as automotive, aerospace, processing and mining industries. The people in the division form an internationally diverse, gender-balanced, and inclusive team of more than 30 cross-disciplinary researchers and support staff. Our strong international collaborative networks and advanced research infrastructure, Stena Industry Innovation Lab, make us a competitive international actor. The Production Systems Division is part of Chalmers largest unit, the Department of Mechanical Engineering, where we unite the power of technology, people, and society to drive the transition toward a sustainable future. The department is highly ranked internationally. Through research, education, and collaboration, we create solutions that connect materials to mobility, ideas to impact – shaping a resilient and sustainable world. About the research project The research will develop and evaluate AI-powered Asset Health Index models that combine heterogeneous condition data, maintenance information, operational data, and expert knowledge into transparent indicators of asset condition and degradation. The work will investigate how artificial intelligence can strengthen model development, support prognostics and Remaining Useful Life estimation, and turn complex data into useful information for maintenance and asset-management decisions. Through close academic and industrial collaboration, the project will validate the models in a real-world pilot environment, with emphasis on general methods for condition assessment, risk analysis, maintenance prioritisation, and lifecycle-oriented decision support for complex technical assets. Who we are looking for The following requirements are mandatory: To qualify as a Doctoral student, you must have a Master's degree (masterexamen) of 120 credits or a Master’s degree (magisterexamen) of 60 credits* in Mechanical Engineering, Production Engineering, Industrial Engineering, Automation, Data Science, Computer Science, or another relevant field. Strong written and verbal communication skills in English. You should have a strong interest in maintenance, asset management, data-driven engineering, artificial intelligence, or prognostics and health management. A strong candidate is highly motivated, self-driven and curious, with excellent problem-solving skills and the ability to work independently while contributing effectively to a collaborative research environment. *for students with an education earned outside of Sweden, a 4-year Bachelor’s degree is accepted. The following experience will strengthen your application: Prior expertise and experience in Asset Health Index (AHI) Data analysis, machine learning, statistical modelling, or optimisation Maintenance engineering, reliability, condition monitoring, prognostics, or asset management Working with heterogeneous industrial data, including structured and unstructured information Programming and development of decision-support or simulation models Academic or industrial collaboration in multidisciplinary environments What you will do Take courses at an advanced level within the Graduate school of Product and Production Development (Product and production development | Chalmers) Develop your own scientific concepts and communicate the results of your research verbally and in writing Develop and validate Asset Health Index models by combining condition data, maintenance information, operational data, and expert knowledge Explore AI-supported methods for prognostics, Remaining Useful Life estimation, transparent model interpretation, and maintenance decision support Implement, test, and demonstrate models and decision-support concepts together with other researchers and industry participants in laboratory and real-world pilot environments The position generally also includes teaching on Chalmers' undergraduate level or performing other duties corresponding to 20 percent of working hours Contract terms The Doctoral student positions are fully funded from start. The position is a fixed-term appointment of four years, with the possibility to teach up to 20%, which extends the position up to five years. A starting salary of 35,725 SEK per month (valid from May 1, 2026). Doctoral studies require physical presence throughout the entire study period. A valid residence permit must be presented by the study start date; otherwise the admission may be withdrawn. What we offer As a Doctoral student at Chalmers, you are an employee and enjoy all employee benefits. Read more about working at Chalmers and our benefits for employees. A dynamic and inspiring working environment in the coastal city of Gothenburg. Read more about Sweden’s generous parental leave, subsidized day care, free schools, healthcare etc at Move To Gothenburg. Chalmers is dedicated to improving gender balance and actively works with equality projects, such as the GENIE Initiative for gender equality and excellence. We celebrate diversity and consider equality and inclusion as fundamental aspects of all our activities. If Swedish is not your native language, Chalmers offers Swedish courses to help you settle in. Find more general information about doctoral studies at Chalmers here. Application procedure The application should be written in English and attached as PDF-files, as below. Maximum size for each file is 40 MB. Please note that the system does not support Zip files. CV Personal letter A brief introduction about yourself. A brief motivation as to why you are interested in this position. Bachelor’s and, if available, master’s thesis together with the transcripts. Use the button at the foot of the page to reach the application form. A background check may be conducted as part of the application process. Please note: The applicant is responsible for ensuring that the application is complete. Incomplete applications and applications sent by email will not be considered. Contact details to references will be requested after the interview. We welcome your application no later than November 30th, 2026. For questions, please contact: Johan Stahre Professor of Production Systems, Division manager johan.stahre@chalmers.se Anders Skoogh Professor of Maintenance Engineering anders.skoogh@chalmers.se We look forward to your application! *** Chalmers declines to consider all offers of further announcement publishing or other types of support for the recruiting process in connection with this position. *** Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg conducts research and education in technology and natural sciences at a high international level. The university has 3100 employees and 10,000 students, and offers education in engineering, science, shipping and architecture. With scientific excellence as a basis, Chalmers promotes knowledge and technical solutions for a sustainable world. Through global commitment and entrepreneurship, we foster an innovative spirit, in close collaboration with wider society. Chalmers was founded in 1829 and has the same motto today as it did then: Avancez – forward.

PhD Research Report: Turning Industrial Equipment Data into Maintenance Decisions

Quick Decision

Chalmers is recruiting a doctoral employee to develop transparent AI-powered Asset Health Indices (AHI), connect them with degradation and Remaining Useful Life (RUL), and test decision support with industrial partners. This fits applicants who want data science to inform equipment maintenance. The advertised appointment is fully funded from the start, four years of research, potentially five with up to 20% teaching/duties, with a SEK 35,725 monthly starting salary effective 1 May 2026. Applications close 30 November 2026. The main questions are the first asset/pilot, data and failure-label availability, supervisory allocation, and individual foreign-degree recognition. Official recruitment,REF2026-0511.

Research Problem and Doctoral Work

The project combines heterogeneous condition measurements, maintenance information, operational data and expert knowledge into understandable indicators of asset condition. It investigates prognostics/RUL, risk analysis, maintenance prioritisation and lifecycle decisions. Work includes developing concepts, implementing/testing models, and demonstrating them in laboratory and real-world pilots with researchers and industry participants. No particular neural architecture, named factory or equipment fleet is specified. These are connected but different outputs. An AHI summarises condition; RUL concerns time until a defined limit under operating assumptions; maintenance priority also depends on consequences, production dependencies and intervention windows. A high prediction score alone cannot show that intervention is worthwhile. Useful contributions could address interpretable fusion, uncertainty, degradation under changing operation, or the link from indicators to decisions. These are analytical possibilities, not extra advertised deliverables. Data feasibility is central. Sensors, work orders and expert descriptions may use different clocks, asset identities and conventions. Preventive replacement may mean a true failure time is never observed. Evaluation should clarify what “health” and end of life mean, how maintenance-record leakage is avoided, how assets/time periods are separated, and what happens when operation changes. Ask whether the pilot can evaluate decision usefulness as well as retrospective accuracy, and what work is possible if data access is delayed.

School, Field and Doctoral Training

The employer and degree institution is Chalmers University of Technology,Gothenburg,Sweden. Production Systems within Mechanical Engineering hosts the position; the named graduate school is Product and Production Development. Its specialisations cover product development, manufacturing processes and production systems, with independent academic/industrial research among its objectives. The division spans system lifecycle, people, automation and processes. This supports an engineering-and-decisions thesis. Division, graduate school. Chalmers is joint 174 in QS 2027 overall; the university reports 57 th in QS 2026 Mechanical,Aeronautical & Manufacturing Engineering. Different years and scopes must be retained. The subject signal is relevant to production engineering; neither figure ranks this maintenance team or guarantees supervision quality. QS profile, subject results. The doctoral overview describes four years of net study, research/courses/teaching, a possible licentiate stage after around two years, a supervisory team and a thesis. It requires 7.5 credits of Generic and Transferable Skills, with access up to 15, including communication, pedagogy, leadership and ethics. Obtain the exact subject-course allocation, reviews and individual study plan. The advertised teaching extension preserves research time; it is not an assumed unfunded extra year. Doctoral structure. Stena Industry Innovation Lab offers production testbeds including 5 G, collaborative robotics and VR/AR assembly. This supports an implementation environment, but does not identify the assigned machine, dataset or pilot partner. Industrial collaboration does not make this Chalmers-employed vacancy an externally employed industrial doctorate. Lab.

Supervisors and Recent Research

Recruitment contacts are Johan Stahre, full professor and Production Systems head, and Anders Skoogh, maintenance-engineering professor and doctoral study director in product/production development. Their roles and Skoogh's portfolio establish a production/maintenance network. Principal/co-supervisor appointments and daily guidance are unstated. AIMOps and STIG show related activity, not the funder or partner of this position. Stahre, Skoogh, portfolio. Three recent Skoogh coauthored works sharpen the assessment:

• Rajashekarappa etal,2026,Production & Manufacturing Research: a systematic/thematic review of 12 industrial MLOps articles identifies seven implementation challenges, including data quality, drift and integration. It supports separating deployment from static accuracy. Skoogh's contribution statement includes conceptualisation, funding, administration, supervision and writing. This is a review, not a validated AHI/RUL solution. Paper.
• Bokrantz,Subramaniyan and Skoogh,2025,International Journal of Production Economics: distinguishes component and production-flow views of opportunistic maintenance, then demonstrates LSTM prediction of intervention windows on an automotive line, outperforming a naïve comparator in precision/recall/F 1. This connects prediction to feasible timing. It does not establish component RUL accuracy or realised savings across factories. Institutional abstract.
• Larsson,Ferm,Bokrantz and Skoogh,2026,Journal of Manufacturing Technology Management: two-year action research in a Swedish pulp/paper company refines smart-maintenance strategy development, emphasising knowledge and communication. Useful indicators need organisational uptake. A single context does not establish universal performance, and this is not an AHI benchmark. Article. Reading covered primary abstracts, selected methods/conclusions/limitations and the MLOps contribution statement. Individual shares for the latter two papers were not established; code/data were not reproduced. The papers support expertise in deployment, decision timing and implementation, while health-index construction remains an open doctoral task.

Funding and Gothenburg Costs

The post offers employment and salary. The advertised monthly amount is the May 2026 starting-rate reference, not net pay or a guarantee of future rates. Chalmers states doctoral programmes incur no tuition fees and lists employee leave, health, pension and insurance arrangements. Confirm salary progression, contract periods and applicable benefits with HR; specific benefit amounts were not verified. Doctoral conditions, benefits. The university's February 2026 student guide gives SEK 14,360–18,360 monthly, including SEK 4,000–8,000 accommodation. This is not a personal doctoral-household quotation; the course-literature amount merits checking against actual recurring needs. Tax depends on income/circumstances, so subtracting student costs from gross salary does not establish savings. Include arrival/deposit/permit costs and actual housing quotes. Cost guide, Tax Agency. The housing foundation explicitly includes doctoral tenants, requiring an employment agreement each semester and at least 50% employment. Allocation involves queue/membership rules; eligibility is not a room guarantee. Published rules took effect in June 2024; confirm current availability and booking terms. Tenancy rules.

Applicant Fit and Preparation

The advert welcomes mechanical/production/industrial engineering, automation, data-science, CS or related degrees. AHI,ML/statistics/optimisation, reliability/maintenance, heterogeneous data, coding and collaboration strengthen an application; these are not all separate mandatory prerequisites. The supplied qualification text accepts a relevant 120/60-credit Swedish master's and explicitly says a four-year bachelor's earned outside Sweden is accepted. Chalmers' general overview instead describes master's-level and corresponding foreign qualifications. This offers a foreign-bachelor route to clarify, not unconditional clearance for every Chinese degree. Ask the recruiting graduate study director to assess the actual degree and transcripts. No universal Chinese percentage threshold was verified. The job requires strong English. Chalmers' general doctoral minimum is English B/6; the referred University Admissions guidance maps English 6/Level 2 to IELTS Academic 6.5 overall,no section below 5.5, with other evidence routes. Confirm how this vacancy wants evidence; the national taught-course portal does not replace the job application. Swedish is not a listed prerequisite, and Swedish courses are offered. English equivalence. For a China-based non-EU applicant, Sweden generally requires the appropriate doctoral residence permit. The job requires physical presence and a valid permit by study start, otherwise admission may be withdrawn. The Migration Agency accepts doctoral-salary documentation and lists SEK 10,656/month as the 2026 maintenance threshold, a permit minimum rather than a budget; its current adult application fee isSEK 1,500, with salary recipients outside the listed scholarship-fee exemption. Admission, employment and permit approval remain separate. Doctoral permit. Preparation could pair a modest reproducible condition-monitoring example with an explanation of missingness, drift, interpretability and the decision it changes. This is advice, not an extra portfolio requirement. Transferable routes include industrial analytics, reliability/PHM, manufacturing digitalisation, decision support and research. The graduate school and papers support that skill alignment; no lab-specific placements, job counts or salary premium were established.

Next Actions and Questions

Apply online by 30 November 2026, in English, with PDF files maximum 40 MB each;noZIP: CV, personal letter explaining background/motivation, bachelor's thesis and, if available, master's thesis, with transcripts. Incomplete/emailed applications are not considered. Reference contacts are requested after interview; a background check may occur. The platform supplies a late-evening Stockholm timestamp, while the official body only names the date; verify the portal clock. Start date is unstated. Questions go to johan.stahre@chalmers.se or anders.skoogh@chalmers.se. Before applying, reconcile foreign-bachelor eligibility and documents. At interview, clarify the first asset, pilot/data readiness, failure definition and censoring, expert participation, supervision, model/decision evaluation and backup plan. Before accepting, obtain salary and employment/teaching dates, fee-free registration, research/travel resources, housing support and the permit/start timetable in writing.

Evidence and Sources

The current official recruitment text identifies the role and contract/application terms. Individual qualification recognition, pilot arrangements, supervisory allocation and future costs require confirmation.

Project, training and institution

• Chalmers official recruitment REF2026-0511
• Production Systems division
• Product and Production Development graduate school
• Chalmers doctoral education regulations overview
• Stena Industry Innovation Lab
• QS Chalmers ranking2027
• Chalmers QS2026 subject performance
• Chalmers Library researcher affiliation guidance

Contacts and recent work

• Johan Stahre official profile
• Anders Skoogh official profile
• Anders Skoogh research portfolio
• Industrial MLOps systematic review2026
• Seizing opportunity: opportunistic maintenance2025
• Implementing smart maintenance2026

Employment, costs and eligibility

• Chalmers living costs2026
• Swedish Migration Agency doctoral permits
• Swedish Tax Agency basic allowance
• Chalmers Studentbostader tenancy rules
• Chalmers employee benefits
• University Admissions English6 equivalence