项目介绍

2026年7月13日

Within the context of the ERC Consolidator Grant project TENACITY (Tensors and Neural Networks for Computational Creativity), funded by the European Research Council, the Centre for Computational Linguistics (CCL), part of the ComForT research unit at KU Leuven, seeks to hire a PhD student to carry out research on constraint-based neural network architectures for creative language generation.

Website van de eenheid

Project

Creativity pervades human language use, yet the mechanisms behind it are poorly understood, and current language technology shows little true creativity. The ERC project TENACITY develops computational models of language that exhibit creativity, combining interpretable tensor factorization methods with neural language models. 
This PhD position focuses on the neural strand of the project. Neural language models are trained to reproduce the patterns of their training data, and thus show little genuine creativity in generation. By constraining a model’s generation process, it is incited to find novel ways of expressing the same content. The PhD research will develop methods for integrating constraints into transformer-based language models and apply them to creative language generation, informed by the latent semantic representations developed within the project. The precise focus will be determined in function of the candidate’s background and interests. You will join the TENACITY team of PhD researchers and postdocs at the Centre for Computational Linguistics. 

Profile

• You hold a Master’s degree in artificial intelligence, computational linguistics, computer science, or equivalent education. 
• You have a thorough experience with neural networks (deep learning) for natural language processing, and a good understanding of current (large) language model architectures. 
• You have excellent programming skills (preferably Python and PyTorch). 
• You have a keen interest in language and linguistics, and in computational creativity. 
• You exhibit excellent proficiency in English and good oral and written communication skills. 

Offer

• We offer a full-time PhD position for 1 year, extendable to 4 years after initial positive evaluation. 
• You will be able to conduct scientific research within a high-level research environment, leading to a doctoral degree. 
• You will work within an ERC-funded project team, with access to ample computing infrastructure and funding for conference travel. 
• You will have the opportunity to participate in international conferences, and benefit from academic training and workshops.

Interested?

For more information please contact Prof. dr. Tim Van de Cruys, mail: tim.vandecruys@kuleuven.be.You can apply for this job no later than August 10, 2026 via the online application tool

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