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MacGillavry Fellowship

The Faculty of Science is organising a fourth round of our prestigious MacGillavry Fellowship programme in the coming academic year. We are asking female researchers who have a strong track record in Informatics and AI, and at the same time have the potential and ambition to obtain a leadership position as (associate/full) professor at the University of Amsterdam to apply. More information about the positions and how to apply will follow soon.

6  MacGillavry Fellowships in Informatics and AI

In this round we have identified six research themes for which we seek applications. We will be hiring one tenure track assistant professor for each of the following themes 1 – 5, and an assistant professor for theme 6.

  • AI for Social Good

    We are seeking to hire a new colleague at the Assistant Professor level who would like to develop an ambitious new line of research in the area of AI for Social Good. This new colleague will be making fundamental contributions to AI that are driven by some of the big societal questions of our time. Relevant domains of application include but are not limited to sustainability and climate change, digital democracy and the fair distribution of societal resources, public health and well-being, and quality education and accessibility. Developing such a line of research likely will require expertise not only in Computer Science and AI but also in a field concerned with understanding and modelling human behaviour at either the individual or the collective level, such as psychology, cognitive science, behavioural economics, or game theory.

  • Data Engineering

    The Informatics Institute of the University of Amsterdam is seeking an assistant professor in data engineering.  This position will be located in INtelligent Data Engineering Lab (INDElab.org). The lab's broad aim is to tackle problems relating to the preparation, management, integration and reuse of data using empirical insights into data science practice.

    You will contribute to the lab through innovative research in topics related to data engineering and data management.

    The successful candidate will have a background in data management or in artificial intelligence/machine learning with an orientation towards data management. This should be evidenced by a track record of publications in renowned international conferences and journals. Relevant venues are VLDB, SIGMOD, ICDE, CIDR, CIKM, ISWC, WWW, AKBC.

    Areas of interest include (but are not limited to): data management for machine learning, data integration, data cleaning, dataflow systems, responsible data science, automated knowledge base construction, and semi-structured/semantic data management.

    As an educator, you will also contribute to the Informatics Institute education program. The program includes bachelor's and masters’ programs in data science, computer science and artificial intelligence. Teaching is approximately 30% of the position’s total time.

    Additionally, you will be expected to acquire funding from sources such as the national funding agency NWO, EU funding via H2020 and industry. Finally, contributions to outreach, both in terms of engaging with the media as well as applying the state of the art research tools to applications in society are valued. UvA spinoffs that bring technology to industry and society are highly encouraged as well as working in the open source community.

  • Computing & Sustainability

    The Institute for Informatics at the University of Amsterdam is seeking to hire a highly motivated Assistant Professor in the broad area of Computing and Sustainability to join our team. This is a tenure-track position placed in the Computational Science Lab at the Informatics Institute of the University of Amsterdam.

    Simulation-based Science is about formulating computational models of phenomena that we observe and performing computer simulations to deepen our understanding of the complex adaptive systems that underpin these phenomena. We are looking for a Computational Scientist whose research addresses challenges related to sustainability, this connection can be in various forms, for example: Computational Modelling of/for Sustainability, Complexity Science and Sustainability, Digital Twins and Sustainability, Energy Efficient Simulations (e.g. in HPC)

    The theme of AI4Science and ‘scientific machine learning’ is increasing in importance in our Informatics Institute, and collaborations in that direction would be welcomed.

    The potential scope of the Tenure Track position is broad, but the candidate should preferably align with ongoing research at the Computational Science Lab and your research should be centred around Modelling and Simulation (including HPC) or Complexity Science and connect to the theme of sustainability.

    The candidate is expected to contribute to education at the institute and play an important role in the Master of Computational Science, a joint degree programme of the UvA and Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, attracting more than 100 students per year from a wide range of academic backgrounds.

    The tenure tracker is expected to acquire his/her own independent funding from sources such as the Dutch Science Foundation, the European Commission (e.g., DestinE), and industry.

  • People and Machines Interacting in the Socio-Physical Environment

    We are seeking an outstanding individual for a tenure-track assistant professor position in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI). The position would be situated within the Informatics Institute, which hosts both HCI and Artificial Intelligence (AI) expertise.

    In their work and research vision, the successful candidate should demonstrate a holistic approach to understanding the benefits and risks of existing HCI and shaping novel forms thereof: an approach that considers (1) the design and implementation of technologies, data, and algorithms, (2) the individual and social context of people, and (3) the socio-physical environment in which both are positioned. We welcome expertise in computing for and within social, sustainable, inclusive, and ethical contexts, as well as the interplay between humans and ethical and explainable AI. The ideal candidate should present a compelling research vision that combines technical expertise with a serious commitment to developing and analyzing socially and individually beneficial applications within an interdisciplinary context, at both the level of fundamental research and real-world applications. We are particularly interested in someone who is able to establish a bridge between HCI, AI, and Design, who is comfortable with different methods and disciplines housed within these fields, as well as interested in pushing the boundaries of their domain in knowledge, meta-science, and practice.

  • Responsible Advice Giving Systems

    Advice giving systems such as search engines, recommender systems, and digital assistants play a key role in many substantial decision-making processes. When used to support consequential decisions, such systems can trigger actions that influence the outcome of tasks they aim to support. How can we design advice giving systems that take their future impact on individuals into account when being trained? How can we align the optimization of advice giving systems for short-term benefits, which are often formulated in terms of utility, with optimization for long-term user goals that may be more societal in nature, e.g., avoiding filter bubbles or maintaining a diverse landscape of content suppliers?

    We are seeking a new colleague with a background in search engines, recommender systems, or digital assistants, someone who is keen to contribute new algorithms, models, and metrics to the development of advice giving systems that are able to optimize for short-term individual utility and long-term individual and societal targets. We value working at the interface of academia and the world around us, both to be inspired and to create impact with our work. The ideal candidate shares our learning-by-doing perspective on the development of responsible search engines, recommender systems, and digital assistant technology.

  • Neuro-symbolic Integration for AI

    We are seeking to hire a new colleague at the Assistant Professor level who will develop an ambitious new line of research in the area of neuro-symbolic artificial intelligence (AI), with particular emphasis on natural language processing  or related fields. We look forward to applications from excellent female candidates whose research programme brings together approaches from symbolic reasoning, knowledge representation or cognitive modelling with the recent advances in machine learning. The ILLC is home to world-leading research groups in logic and formal semantics, machine learning and natural language processing. An ideal candidate for this position would strengthen the link between the current research in neural natural language processing, language technology and symbolic AI, conducted by these groups.

These themes have been chosen to align with the ambition and current research strengths of the institute. The fellowship programme aims to hire the best candidates available, so we encourage applications in which the expertise may not completely fit the theme descriptions.

Position 1 will be embedded as a shared appointment between the Informatics Institute and the Institute for Language, Logic and Computation.
Positions 2 – 5 will be embedded in the Informatics Institute.
Position 6 will be embedded in the Institute for Language, Logic and Computation.

Startup package

For all positions we offer a startup package that includes a PhD position and sufficient benchfees. We also offer a dedicated leadership mentoring programme that includes:

  • leadership training
  • regular meetings with senior leadership in our university (Rector and Dean of faculty of Science)
  • meetings with senior female role models in academia and industry
  • support for participation in https://women.acm.org celebrations
  • and a female mentor of your own choosing

We are actively committed to creating a workplace where issues of equality, diversity and inclusion are at the forefront. In particular, the diversity committees of the two institutes are pursuing a number of initiatives designed to support early stage academics, particularly female academics, in their career progression.

Selection procedure

Your application will be forwarded to a dedicated selection committee for the specific position you have applied for. If you apply to more than one position, which is possible, please mention this in your applications. Each selection committee will draw up a list of best candidates. These candidates will be invited to spend a day at the Faculty of Science. This day will consist of a public presentation to be held by the candidate and an interview with the selection committee, as well as the opportunity to meet potential future colleagues and to walk around on our campus and specially to visit our Lab42 building. The selection committee include a female chair, a MacGillavry fellow of a previous round, and an internal and external expert for the specific position. Candidates will also take part in a supplementary programme compiled by the institute directors.

We intend to open the application for these positions on October 1, 2023 with a deadline for application before November 30, 2023.

Contact

For more information about the selection procedure and application procedure you can contact Peter Scholts (Faculty Personnel Department).

P.J.M. (Peter) Scholts

Faculty of Science

Personeelszaken FNWI

For more information about the scientific profile and options you can contact:

Drs. ir. K.J. (Kris) de Jong

Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences

Informatics Institute

Drs. P. (Peter) van Ormondt

Faculty of Science

ILLC

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