1-2 Post doctors (2 years) within Symbolic AI

To our institution, which conducts research at the highest international level and offers several high-quality educational programs, we are now seeking 1-2 postdoctoral researchers to conduct work on symbolic AI. The position is full-time for two years, starting on 01.03.2025 or as agreed upon.

The Department of Computing Science has been growing rapidly in recent years, with a focus on creating an inclusive and bottom-up driven research environment.  Our workplace consists of a diverse set of people from different nationalities, backgrounds and fields. As a postdoctoral researcher working with us, you receive the benefits of support in career development, networking, administrative and technical support functions, along with good employment conditions. More information about the department is available at: https://www.umu.se/en/department-of-computing-science/

Project description and working tasks

In modern software systems and the organizations that run them, a substantial part of day-to-day decisions with critical impact on individual humans and society at large is either fully automated or heavily relies on automatically provided decision support. While machine learning approaches become increasingly prevalent in this context, the cores of the systems’ reasoning engines typically remain ‘symbolic’ (knowledge-based). These symbolic or neuro-symbolic software systems are of high practical complexity, which makes them difficult to reason about, for example when assessing which meta-level changes lead to the intended real-world impact. Working towards solving this problem, the theme of the broader project is 'Automating Reasoning about Automated Reasoning'. From a fundamental research perspective, this relates to the automation of meta-reasoning pertaining to general-purpose reasoning methods. Here, the intended focus is on reasoning approaches that can revise their conclusions in face of new evidence/knowledge. The plan is to cover both nascent approaches that are considered promising facilitators of the fusion of subsymbolic, symbolic, and human intelligence, as well as industry-scale reasoning systems. Instances of the former class are different variants of formal argumentation, whereas in the latter case, the focus can lie on mainstream rule languages that are deployed in large-scale IT systems.

Within the broader realm of the theme 'Automating Reasoning about Automated Reasoning', research tasks can be selected based on the strengths of the successful candidate, in either the broad direction of principle-based meta-reasoning (formal focus) and applications of automated meta-reasoning to large-scale software systems (engineering focus).

Research is carried out in collaboration with other scientists at the Department of Computing Science focusing on knowledge-based AI, under the leadership of Vicenç Torra and Timotheus Kampik. Excellent international collaboration opportunities exist, backed-up by a strong track-record of joint work with globally leading research groups and large tech companies.

The postdoctoral position is funded by Wallenberg AI, Autonomous Systems and Software Program.

Wallenberg AI, Autonomous Systems and Software Program (WASP) is Sweden’s largest individual research program ever, a major national initiative for strategically motivated basic research, education and faculty recruitment. The program addresses research on artificial intelligence and autonomous systems acting in collaboration with humans, adapting to their environment through sensors, information and knowledge, and forming intelligent systems-of-systems.  The vision of WASP is excellent research and competence in artificial intelligence, autonomous systems and software for the benefit of Swedish society and industry. Read more: https://wasp-sweden.org/

If desired by the candidate and based on current departmental teaching demand, the position may include up to 20% of teaching time.

Qualifications

To be appointed under the postdoctoral agreement, the postdoctoral fellow is required to have completed a doctoral degree or a foreign degree deemed equivalent to a doctoral degree. This qualification requirements must be fulfilled no later than at the time of the appointment decision.

To be appointed under the postdoctoral agreement, priority should be given to candidates who completed their doctoral degree, according to what is stipulated in the paragraph above, no later than three years prior. If there are special reasons, candidates who completed their doctoral degree prior to that may also be eligible. Special reasons include absence due to illness, parental leave, appointments of trust in trade union organisations, military service, or similar circumstances, as well as clinical practice or other forms of appointment/assignment relevant to the subject area. Postdoctoral fellows who are to teach or supervise must have taken relevant courses in teaching and learning in higher education.

Documented expertise (typically backed-up by relevant publications) in one of the following topics of interest is required:

• Logic-based reasoning approaches, for example formal argumentation; or
• Formal aspects of autonomous agents or multi-agent systems.

It is highly meritorious if you have experience with independently carrying out formal analyses, such as principle-based analyses of automated reasoning approaches. Alternatively, candidates with excellent software engineering and writing skills are encouraged to apply.

Important personal qualities are, besides creativity and critical thinking, excellent problem solving skills, agreeableness, discipline, ability to work both independently and in a group, and experience in scientific interaction with researchers from diverse backgrounds. The working language will be English.

Application

A full application should include:

• Cover letter describing your research interests and why you are applying for the advertised position
• Curriculum vitae (CV) with publication list,
• Verified copy of doctoral degree certificate or documentation that clarifies when the degree of doctor is expected to be obtained,
• Verified copies of other diplomas, list of completed academic courses and grades,
• Copy of doctoral thesis and up to five relevant articles,
• Other documents that the applicant wishes to claim.
• Contact information to two persons willing to act as references.

The application must be written in English or Swedish. The application is made through our electronic recruitment system. Documents sent electronically must be in Word or PDF format. Log in to the system and apply via the button at the end of this page. The closing date is 15.01.2025. Further details are provided by Timotheus Kampik (tkampik@cs.umu.se).