项目介绍

2025年1月24日

Your function

Join our team and help develop the next generation of intelligent diagnostic tools to enhance the efficiency, safety, and reliability of advanced intelligent diagnostic systems.

A 4-year full-time PhD position is available at the Knowledge in Artificial Intelligence group (KAI) and the Learning and Reasoning group (L&R) of the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, in close collaboration with Philips, Canon, and TNO under the research project Zorro funded by NWO (Dutch Research Council). 

As a PhD student, you will explore how to enhance the capabilities of state-of-the-art methodologies that rely on large language models (e.g. GPT, LLaMA, and BERT models) for knowledge extraction and inference. While these models are powerful, they lack the correctness and explainability guarantees essential for critical applications. Your research will focus on integrating and constraining machine learning extraction techniques with formal constraints, such as those found in the area of knowledge representation and reasoning. You will investigate various approaches, including leveraging knowledge graphs, ontology and embeddings, to improve the accuracy and transparency of these models. Additionally, your work will extend to linking technical documentation with established inference rules, enabling more precise predictions. Towards the end of your PhD, you will have the unique opportunity to validate your findings in a real-world setting with the industrial partners of the Zorro project.

Our PhD students are expected to publish and their work at venues such as general AI conferences (e.g. AAAI, IJCAI, ECAI and UAI), as well as Machine learning venues (e.g. NeurIPS, ICLR, and ICML), NLP conferences (like ACL and EMNLP) and other major domain-specific conferences such as WebConf, ISWC, KR, NeSy, and CIKM.

As a university, we strive to cultivate a welcoming and supportive community for researchers while championing equal opportunities for all. KAI and L&R, two exceptional teams that originated from the KR&R team, embody this spirit. We value diversity in all its forms, recognizing its richness enhances the quality of our teaching, research, and services. By actively seeking talent from diverse backgrounds and experiences, we are committed to creating an inclusive environment where diversity is celebrated as a vital strength.

Your profile

We are looking for a highly motivated PhD candidate passionate about Artificial Intelligence with the following qualifications:

• A Master’s degree (or equivalent) in Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence, or a closely related field
• Background in Knowledge Representation and Reasoning, Semantic Technologies, Nature Language Processing (NLP), and Machine Learning (ML) 
• Solid programming skills, e.g., in Python or/and Java
• Good communication skills in English (verbal and written)
• Previous research experience on similar topics is a bonus

The student will be supervised by Dr. Jieying Chen, Dr. Michael Cochez and Dr. Stefan Schlobach.

We realise that each individual brings a unique set of skills, expertise and mindset. Therefore we are happy to invite anyone who recognises themselves in the profile to apply, even if you do not meet all the requirements.

What do we offer?

A challenging position in a socially engaged organisation. At VU Amsterdam, you contribute to education, research and service for a better world. And that is valuable. So in return for your efforts, we offer you:

• a salary of minimum € 2.901,00 (PhD) and maximum € 3.707,00 (PhD) gross per month, on a full-time basis. This is based on UFO profile PhD candidate. The exact salary depends on your education and experience.
• a position for 1 FTE, but you could reduce your working hours to 0.8 FTE.Your employment contract will initially last 18 months. After a satisfactory evaluation of the initial appointment, the contract will be extended to a total duration of 4 years.

We also offer you attractive fringe benefits and regulations. Some examples:

• A full-time 38-hour working week comes with a holiday leave entitlement of 232 hours per year. If you choose to work 40 hours, you have 96 extra holiday leave hours on an annual basis. For part-timers, this is calculated pro rata.
• 8% holiday allowance and 8.3% end-of-year bonus
• solid pension scheme (ABP)
• contribution to commuting expenses
• optional model for designing a personalized benefits package
• certain tax benefits (30% ruling) might apply to international candidates

For information about our excellent fringe benefits of employment see comprehensive | Working At VU