News and Events: Open Positions

Are you looking for a PhD position where you can use your mathematical skills to improve how we make decisions, arrive at compromises, and aggregate information in a group? Are you excited about doing this kind of research in an interdisciplinary environment, in a team with smart and friendly colleagues? And are you interested in an academic career in Artificial Intelligence?

Then you may want to join us. We are looking for a PhD candidate in the field of computational social choice to join us in the COMSOC Group at the Institute for Logic, Language and Computation (ILLC) in Amsterdam.

Are you a high potential young researcher with a PhD degree in Computer Science, Computational Linguistics, Mathematics, Artificial Intelligence, or a related discipline, and would you be interested to join the Logic and Language programme at our institute to investigate Natural Language Interpretation as Abductive Inference? If so, we invite you to apply for this position.

This postdoc position is part of the NWO Open Competition project 'A Sentence Uttered Makes a World Appear---Natural Language Interpretation as Abductive Model Generation'. The successful applicant will join the group of Reinhard Muskens. The aim of the project is to explore how semantic values are assigned to natural language expressions in a compositional way and how the resulting values, represented as logical expressions, are subsequently enriched by means of abductive reasoning. The latter is studied in a tableaux setting.

While this is primarily a research position, you will have the opportunity to contribute to teaching activities.

Bitstring semantics, which was recently developed in logic, is a formalism for exploring the meaning relations between different expressions. Because it operates in a thoroughly local fashion, this formalism is able to achieve a good balance between high expressivity and low mathematical/computational complexity. The overarching goal of the BITSHARE project is to explore new applications of bitstring semantics in other disciplines that are concerned with meaning and reasoning, viz., philosophy, linguistics, psychology and computer science. Our target applications include some of the most important research topics in these disciplines today, such as scalar implicatures, the semantics/pragmatics interface, collaborative knowledge extraction, and probabilistic causal models. Through these well-chosen target applications, the project will demonstrate that bitstring semantics offers a shared representation formalism for a broad, interdisciplinary community of reasoning researchers, in which the insights from different disciplines can be expressed and combined with each other.

In order to carry out this research, we are looking to hire a total number of four PhD students. The current PhD position is situated at the interface between philosophy and linguistics. Our starting point is the observation that many phenomena and lexical fields display a scalar structure, which can consist of endpoints, intervals and/or midpoints (examples: all – some – no; less than – equal – greater than). Our central theoretical aim is to generalize the formalism of bitstring semantics so that it allows us to capture these types of scalar properties. Next, our central descriptive aim is to analyze the scalar structure underlying natural language quantifiers expressing proportionality (at least 20%/the majority/most of the A are B), evaluation (many/few of the A are B) and normativity (too few/enough/too many of the A are B).

There is an opening for a full-time two-year postdoc position at the Algorithms and Complexity group at TU Wien (Vienna University of Technology), Vienna, Austria. The position is research-only, but interested candidates have the opportunity get involved in teaching.

Required are a PhD degree in Computer Science or related area and excellent knowledge of algorithms and complexity, preferably in the setting of parameterized complexity and fixed-parameter tractability. Some background in graph theory, combinatorics, satisfiability, computational logic, or constraint satisfaction is of advantage. Knowledge of German is not required.

We are happy to announce that there is going to be a call for a post-doc position (assegno di ricerca) in mathematical logic at the University of Udine, Italy. Priority will be given to applicants whose interest overlaps with those of our group, mainly in reverse mathematics, computability theory and set theory.

The call will open on 23 September 2019 and will close on 14 October 2019. The position must start before 1st February 2020. The duration of the position is one year, renewable for a second year. Applicants should have a PhD degree at the time of the application.

Salary is standard for Italian post-doc positions (17157.35E per year) and funds for research travel will be internationally competitive. The position carries no teaching load.

The Game Theory Group at the Technion is inviting applications for fully funded postdoctoral positions in Game Theory (broadly defined). As a postdoc in our group, you will work with a varied team comprised of both leading researchers and young, highly motivated colleagues, all of whom are passionate about topics at the intersection of computer science, economics, operations research and game theory.

If you fit this profile and are passionate about an academic research career path, we would love to hear from you. Women are particularly encouraged to apply. Applications will be considered on a rolling basis until positions are filled.

The AI Lab of the Vrije Universiteit Brussels invites applications for a PhD position (or short-term postdoc position) in computer science. This position focuses on reasoning with distributed data, including topics such as collaborative query answering, combining pesonal and open data, incentives, trust, confidence, and complexity.

This is a topic on the edge between knowledge representation and reasoning research on the one hand and database research on the other hand.

The Department of Computer Science at the University of Oxford is seeking to hire a Departmental Lecturer in theoretical computer science. Areas of particular interest include logic, verification, and algorithms. This is a fixed-term contract until 31 March 2021.

We are looking for highly motivated candidates to enrich a unique Dutch consortium of researchers that aims to cross the boundaries of various disciplines to unravel the neurocognitive mechanisms of language and its interaction with other cognitive systems. This specific project aims to advance our understanding of the mechanisms of fast, flexible linguistic inference by leveraging recent major advances in our understanding of the representations and computations necessary for sequential model-based action planning.

Currently, our consortium advertises two Postdoctoral Researcher positions. These positions provide the opportunity for conducting world-class research as a member of an interdisciplinary team. Each position has its own requirements and profile. General requirements for all positions are: a degree in cognitive science, cognitive neuroscience, computational cognitive neuroscience, computer science, mathematics, mathematical psychology, formal linguistics, or a related field; affinity with quantitative analyses; strong motivation; excellent proficiency in written and spoken English.

The School of Humanities at the University of Tasmania is seeking a new Head. The School encompasses four discipline groupings or departments: Philosophy & Gender Studies, History & Classics, English, Global Languages & Cultures.

The position as Head presupposes a good track record in university leadership, but also affords scope for research and perhaps some teaching. The Head of School contributes high level knowledge and experience, energy and distinguished leadership attributes in the pursuit of excellence and achievement demonstrated through experience in developing and leading academic staff and programs and translating strategy to positive outcomes. This exciting opportunity will suit an accomplished academic leader or an academic with recognised leadership attributes seeking a management and administrative challenge.

The Rigorous System Design Lab. in Huawei Grenoble Research Center (GRC), France invites applications for two industrial PhD theses (CIFRE) in the area of formal modeling and analysis of embedded systems. The first subject is related to the formalization of requirements expressed in natural language.  The second thesis is about performance analysis of Embedded Systems.

The work will primarily take place in Huawei Grenoble Research Center under the local supervision of Dr. Ayoub Nouri for Huawei and the academic supervision of Prof. Saddek Bensalem at Verimag laboratory, University of Grenoble Alpes.

The section for Formal Methods of DTU Compute offers a 3-years PhD position starting in late 2019 or early 2020. The position is funded by the Independent Research Fund of Denmark through the project 'REDUCTO: A novel approach for the reduction of Boolean networks'. The PhD student will be co-supervised by Andrea Vandin and the Head of Section Alberto Lluch Lafuente.

Boolean networks (BN) are a graph-based well-established method to model biological systems. In order to accurately model systems, we often face models too complex to be interpreted or analyzed. The project aims at developing novel mathematically-grounded techniques and tools to reduce and simplify complex BNs. Tool support will be based on the tool ERODE, maintained by the PI.

A PhD position is available (fully funded for 4 years with the possibility of extension) at the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department of Utah State University. The PhD position at Utah State University will be advancing and developing efficient model abstraction and state space truncation techniques for the infinite-state CTMC models. The expected starting date is early January 2020.

Applicants must have a bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or a related field. A master's degree is preferred. The successful candidate is expected to demonstrate strong background and interest in formal methods and algorithms, and preferably basic knowledge of probability and random process. He/She should be confident in independently developing academic software tools. Good writing and presentation skills in English are important as well. Knowledge of synthetic biology is preferred, but not required.

At the Institute of Philosophy II of the Ruhr-University in Bochum a fellowship for a PhD student is offered in the area of philosophy of mind and cognition in the research group of Prof. Albert Newen. The fellowship will be first contracted for 1 year and after an assessment can be further extended for another 2 years (the planned full funding period for the PhD is three years). Candidates should be interested in working out a project in the area of the philosophy of mind, language and/or cognition.

Thematic Framework: interdisciplinary philosophical project in the area of theoretical philosophy of mind, language or cognition (open for suggestions). Ideally the project is connected with one of ongoing projects in the group of Prof. Newen: 1. Theories of Understanding Others; 2. Self-Consciousness and Agency; 3. Theories of Emotion; 4. Philosophy of Neurosciences and their Explanations; 5. Philosophy of Artificial Intelligence; 6. Theories of Belief and Theories of Perception; 7. Experimental Philosophy.

The Department of Philosophy at the University of Milan is looking for a very strong and highly motivated postdoctoral researcher in Logic to join Marcello D'Agostino and Hykel Hosni who are the PIs of the project 'Logical Foundations and Applications of Depth-Bounded Probability'. The succesful candidate will work on the "Formal Argumentation: a Framework for Rational Reasoning and Learning Under Uncertainty in AI" project.The motivating idea of this project is the observation that real-world reasoners possess limited resources. However, standard probabilistic methods systematically disregard this feature and impose constraints that realistic forecasters may never be able to attain. This project takes up the challenge of developing a logically sound, computationally feasible and therefore practically applicable theory of rational reasoning and decision making under uncertainty.

Requirements: Strong PhD in Logic and related areas with a solid background in at least two of the following: non classical logics, computational complexity, probability theory, formal argumentation theory, and/or decision/game theory.

The Knowledge Representation and Reasoning (KRR) research group at the Department of Computer Science, Faculty of Engineering of the KU Leuven has an open position for a PhD student or Postdoc.

The group of prof. Marc Denecker and prof. Gerda Janssens explores the Knowledge Base paradigm in which domain knowledge is expressed in a declarative Knowledge Base (KB) and (re-)used to solve various computational problems by applying suitable forms of inference. The group designs language constructs and methodologies for knowledge representation languages and develops the Knowledge Base system IDP. It also uses other state of the art technology (e.g., systems from Answer Set Programming, Constraint Programming and Sat Modulo Theory systems such as Z3).

Your research will cover the following topics.
- You will learn formal and informal aspects of KR languages.
- You will learn about implementation of inference techniques for KB systems.
- You will use such tools to develop KB solutions for knowledge intense business and legal applications.
- Much focus will be on interactive applications where many functionalities are required and a range of interesting inference tasks arise. You will design new language constructs to improve KR in these fields.
- You will develop tools that help domain experts in expressing their knowledge in natural but formally precise way.

A PhD project on the analysis of probabilistic and concurrent systems using machine learning techniques is available at the Department of Computer Science of the University of Liverpool, UK. The successful candidate will be supervised by Dr Dominik Wojtczak (Department of Computer Science, and receive a studentship of tuition fees paid at the Home/EU rate for 3.5 years and a stipend of £15,009 and a research support fund of £1,000 per annum for 3.5 years.

Applications from non-EU students are welcomed, however, in that case the scholarship will only pay for tuition fees and the applicant would need to come up with alternative arrangements to cover their subsistence costs.

We are looking to hire an exceptionally able and highly-motivated PhD student in the area of logic and verification to work in UCL's PPLV group. We are particularly keen to find someone who is interested in systems modelling and verification and their underlying logical theory. The studentship is aligned with the IRIS project which is focussed on understanding and reasoning about the compositional structure of systems models and the supporting idea of an interface --- and will be supervised by Professor David Pym and Dr. James Brotherston.

In more detail, area of the studentship is in logic and its application to program and systems verification, with a particular interest in the development and application of logical tools based on bunched logic, separation logic, and concurrent separation logic (and related ideas) and their use to reason about the correctness of interfaces between programs, systems, and organizations. The project may range from theoretical work in logic (semantics and proof theory) through the theory of system modelling tools to the design and implementation of modelling and verification tools.