<div dir="ltr">Dear all,<br><br>(Apologies for cross-posting)<br><br>The Cognitive Artificial Intelligence and Robotics (CAIR) team at the CYENS Centre of Excellence (Cyprus) is inviting expressions of interest for the <b>Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellowships (MSCA-PF) 2026</b>.<br><br>We are recruiting ambitious candidates to co-develop competitive proposals on <b>Open-Ended & Continual Learning, World Models, and Robot Learning</b>.<br><br>Please find the full call for expressions of interest below.<br><br>Best regards,<br>Vassilis Vassiliades<div><div class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="margin:0cm 0cm 8pt;text-align:center;line-height:13.91px"><br class="gmail-Apple-interchange-newline"><hr size="2" width="100%" align="center"></div></div><div><font face="arial, sans-serif"><br></font></div><div><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0cm 8pt;line-height:107%"><font face="arial, sans-serif"><b>[MSCA 2026 | Cyprus] Postdoctoral Fellowships: Open-Ended
</b><b><span lang="EN-GB">Interactive & </span>Embodied
Intelligence</b></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0cm 8pt;line-height:107%"><font face="arial, sans-serif"><i>Join the CAIR Team at CYENS to build generalist agents
that discover, reason, and act in interactive environments</i><i><span lang="EN-GB">.</span></i></font></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0cm 8pt;line-height:107%"><b><font face="arial, sans-serif">The Opportunity</font></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0cm 8pt;line-height:107%"><font face="arial, sans-serif">The Cognitive Artificial Intelligence and Robotics (CAIR)
research team at CYENS Centre of Excellence (Nicosia, Cyprus) invites <b>expressions
of interest</b> for the <b>Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellowships
(MSCA PF) 2026.</b></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0cm 8pt;line-height:107%"><span lang="EN-GB"><font face="arial, sans-serif">We are
recruiting ambitious candidates to co-develop competitive proposals on
interactive and embodied AI. Our research vision moves beyond static datasets
toward generalist agents that leverage open-ended learning, world models, and
multi-agent dynamics to discover and adapt through interaction. Projects may be
evaluated in interactive environments (simulation, games, and multi-agent
worlds) and extended to real-world validation on robotic platforms.</font></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0cm 8pt;line-height:107%"><b><font face="arial, sans-serif">Timeline</font></b></p>
<ul style="margin-top:0cm;margin-bottom:0cm" type="disc">
<li class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0cm 8pt;line-height:107%"><font face="arial, sans-serif"><b>Call
opens:</b> 9 April 2026</font></li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0cm 8pt;line-height:107%"><font face="arial, sans-serif"><b>Deadline:</b>
9 September 2026</font></li>
</ul>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0cm 8pt;line-height:107%"><b><font face="arial, sans-serif">About the Host and Supervisor</font></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0cm 8pt;line-height:107%"><font face="arial, sans-serif">The CAIR team at CYENS is led by Dr. Vassilis Vassiliades
and studies learning systems that autonomously acquire, adapt, and reuse skills
over time. The supervisor’s prior
research spans Quality-Diversity algorithms, reinforcement learning, continual
learning, and data-efficient robot learning, with an interest in predictive
models for planning and decision-making.<span lang="EN-GB"></span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0cm 8pt;line-height:107%"><font face="arial, sans-serif">These foundations motivate the team’s current direction
toward open-ended embodied intelligence. The
MSCA project is intended as a collaborative effort in which the postdoctoral
researcher plays a central role in shaping the scientific direction and
establishing a new research line within the team.<span lang="EN-GB"></span></font></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0cm 8pt;line-height:107%"><b><font face="arial, sans-serif">Why Apply With CYENS?</font></b></p>
<ul style="margin-top:0cm;margin-bottom:0cm" type="disc">
<li class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0cm 8pt;line-height:107%"><font face="arial, sans-serif"><b>The
"Widening" Multiplier:</b> As a Cyprus-based host (a Widening
country), eligible proposals may also be considered for ERA Fellowships if
not funded under the main MSCA call, providing an <b>additional funding
pathway</b> without requiring a new application.</font></li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0cm 8pt;line-height:107%"><font face="arial, sans-serif"><b>Pure
Research Focus:</b> This is a dedicated research role with <b>no teaching
obligations</b>, designed to support high-impact publications in venues
such as NeurIPS, ICRA, CoRL, RSS, ICML, and ICLR.</font></li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0cm 8pt;line-height:107%"><font face="arial, sans-serif"><b>Agile
Infrastructure:</b> We prioritize <b>compute-efficient</b> and <b>simulation-first</b>
approaches, offering dedicated HPC resources (A6000 48GB / A5000 24GB
nodes)<span lang="EN-GB"> suitable for
large-scale simulation and fine-tuning foundation models</span>, with
reliable access and minimal contention<span lang="EN-GB">.</span></font></li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0cm 8pt;line-height:107%"><font face="arial, sans-serif"><b>International
Secondments:</b> We actively facilitate optional research visits (3–6
months) to our network of international academic partners to strengthen
training, networking, and the project's scientific impact.</font></li>
</ul>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0cm 8pt;line-height:107%"><b><font face="arial, sans-serif">Research Tracks</font></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0cm 8pt;line-height:107%"><font face="arial, sans-serif"><i>We encourage proposals that bridge these areas (e.g.,
world models for robust transfer and planning, or auto-curricula that drive the
discovery of reusable skills).</i> <i>Tracks 1–2 can be pursued fully in
interactive simulation environments, while Track 3 focuses on robotics and
cross-platform transfer.</i><span lang="EN-GB"></span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0cm 8pt;line-height:107%"><font face="arial, sans-serif"><b>1) </b><b><span lang="EN-GB">Open-Ended
& Continual Learning</span></b></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0cm 8pt;line-height:107%"><i><font face="arial, sans-serif">Moving beyond static datasets through self-generated
experience and lifelong interaction.</font></i></p>
<ul style="margin-top:0cm;margin-bottom:0cm" type="disc">
<li class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0cm 8pt;line-height:107%"><font face="arial, sans-serif"><b>Auto-Curricula:</b>
<span lang="EN-GB">c</span>o-evolution of
agents and environments (e.g., POET, UED) to generate
"regret-maximizing" training distributions.</font></li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0cm 8pt;line-height:107%"><font face="arial, sans-serif"><b>Discovery
Algorithms:</b> Quality Diversity (<span lang="EN-GB">e.g., </span>MAP-Elites), intrinsically motivated goal exploration,
and unsupervised skill discovery.</font></li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0cm 8pt;line-height:107%"><font face="arial, sans-serif"><b>Continual
& Meta-Learning:</b> <span lang="EN-GB">s</span>olving
the stability-plasticity dilemma and utilizing learning-to-learn
strategies for fast adaptation to novel tasks without catastrophic
forgetting.</font></li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0cm 8pt;line-height:107%"><font face="arial, sans-serif"><b>Predictive
Knowledge:</b> <span lang="EN-GB">l</span>earning
large collections of self-generated predictions (e.g., General Value
Functions) to continually expand the agent<span lang="EN-GB">’</span>s knowledge without relying on
external rewards.</font></li>
</ul>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0cm 8pt;line-height:107%"><font face="arial, sans-serif"><b>2) World Models & Abstraction</b><b><span lang="EN-GB"></span></b></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0cm 8pt;line-height:107%"><font face="arial, sans-serif"><i>Structuring learned knowledge into abstractions that
support planning and reasoning</i><i> in
embodied or interactive environments.</i><span lang="EN-GB"></span></font></p>
<ul style="margin-top:0cm;margin-bottom:0cm" type="disc">
<li class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0cm 8pt;line-height:107%"><font face="arial, sans-serif"><b>Multi-Level
Representations:</b> <span lang="EN-GB">h</span>ierarchical
world models planning over skills/options rather than atomic actions.</font></li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0cm 8pt;line-height:107%"><font face="arial, sans-serif"><b>Learning
Abstractions:</b> discovering compact state and skill representations that
enable long-horizon planning.</font></li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0cm 8pt;line-height:107%"><font face="arial, sans-serif"><b>Multi-Agent
</b><b><span lang="EN-GB">Models</span>:</b>
learning predictive models of other agents and joint dynamics for
coordination and planning.</font></li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0cm 8pt;line-height:107%"><font face="arial, sans-serif"><b>System-2
Reasoning:</b> <span lang="EN-GB">u</span>tilizing
learned world models for test-time search (<span lang="EN-GB">e.g., </span>MCTS) and counterfactual
reasoning.</font></li>
</ul>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0cm 8pt;line-height:107%"><font face="arial, sans-serif"><b>3) Robot Learning & </b><b><span lang="EN-GB">Transfer</span></b></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0cm 8pt;line-height:107%"><font face="arial, sans-serif"><i>Scaling robot learning via simulation-first development,
portable data, and cross-platform transfer (including sim-to-real when
relevant).</i><span lang="EN-GB"></span></font></p>
<ul style="margin-top:0cm;margin-bottom:0cm" type="disc">
<li class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0cm 8pt;line-height:107%"><font face="arial, sans-serif"><b>Foundation
Model Adaptation:</b> <span lang="EN-GB">e</span>fficient
fine-tuning/distillation of Vision-Language-Action (VLA) models for
robotic control.</font></li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0cm 8pt;line-height:107%"><font face="arial, sans-serif"><b>Heterogeneous
Coordination:</b> <span lang="EN-GB">d</span>ecentralized
policies for diverse robot teams (e.g., Quadruped + Mobile Manipulator
collaboration).</font></li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0cm 8pt;line-height:107%"><font face="arial, sans-serif"><b>Data-Driven
Manipulation: </b><span lang="EN-GB">l</span>everaging
vision-based hand tracking, VR/AR interfaces, and handheld grippers for
portable data collection, alongside low-cost arms for accessible
teleoperation and imitation-learning pipelines.</font></li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0cm 8pt;line-height:107%"><font face="arial, sans-serif"><b>Robust
</b><b><span lang="EN-GB">Transfer</span>:</b>
<span lang="EN-GB">u</span>ncertainty-aware
control and distributional RL for safe generalization across domains
(simulation and real-world).</font></li>
</ul>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0cm 8pt;line-height:107%"><b><font face="arial, sans-serif">Resources & Hardware</font></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0cm 8pt;line-height:107%"><font face="arial, sans-serif">We support simulation-first research with pathways to
real-world validation when relevant:</font></p>
<ul style="margin-top:0cm;margin-bottom:0cm" type="disc">
<li class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0cm 8pt;line-height:107%"><font face="arial, sans-serif"><b>Compute:</b>
Dedicated CYENS AI Cluster (HPC) with A6000 48GB / A5000 24GB nodes for
large-scale simulation (Isaac Lab / MuJoCo) and deep learning.</font></li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0cm 8pt;line-height:107%"><font face="arial, sans-serif"><b>Robotics
Platforms:</b> Unitree A1 (quadruped), Turtlebot 4 (mobile base), SO-101
low-cost manipulation arms for teleoperation and imitation-learning
experiments; support for portable demonstration collection (UMI-style).</font></li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0cm 8pt;line-height:107%"><font face="arial, sans-serif"><b><span lang="EN-GB">Industrial Exposure</span>:</b>
Availability of commercial 6-DoF collaborative arms through CYENS
facilities and partner arrangements.</font></li>
</ul>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0cm 8pt;line-height:107%"><b><font face="arial, sans-serif">Eligibility Check</font></b></p>
<ul style="margin-top:0cm;margin-bottom:0cm" type="disc">
<li class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0cm 8pt;line-height:107%"><font face="arial, sans-serif"><b>PhD
Rule:</b> You must hold a PhD by <b><span lang="EN-GB">9 September</span> 2026</b> (with max 8 years post-PhD research
experience).</font></li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0cm 8pt;line-height:107%"><font face="arial, sans-serif"><b>Mobility
Rule:</b> You must <b>not</b> have lived or worked in <b>Cyprus</b> for
more than 12 months in the 3 years prior to the deadline.</font></li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0cm 8pt;line-height:107%"><font face="arial, sans-serif"><b>Resubmission
Rule:</b> If you applied for an MSCA-PF in the previous call (2025) with
CYENS as your host and your proposal scored below 70%, you are not
eligible to apply with us this year. (Applying with a different host
previously does not affect your eligibility).</font></li></ul>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0cm 8pt;line-height:107%"><b><font face="arial, sans-serif">How to Apply</font></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0cm 8pt;line-height:107%"><font face="arial, sans-serif">Email <b><a href="mailto:v.vassiliades@cyens.org.cy">v.vassiliades@cyens.org.cy</a></b> with the subject: <b>“MSCA-PF-2026
Candidate”</b></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0cm 8pt;line-height:107%"><b><font face="arial, sans-serif">Please include:</font></b></p>
<ol style="margin-top:0cm;margin-bottom:0cm" start="1" type="1">
<li class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0cm 8pt;line-height:107%"><font face="arial, sans-serif"><b>CV:</b>
Including a full list of publications.</font></li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0cm 8pt;line-height:107%"><font face="arial, sans-serif"><b>Research
Statement (Max 1 Page):</b> A concrete project sketch outlining the
problem, method, and evaluation plan. <i>Please note: Generic applications
without a specific research idea aligned with these tracks will not be
considered.</i></font></li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0cm 8pt;line-height:107%"><font face="arial, sans-serif"><b>Representative
Work:</b> PDFs or links to 2–3 of your best papers.</font></li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0cm 8pt;line-height:107%"><font face="arial, sans-serif"><b>Eligibility
Note:</b> Brief confirmation of your PhD date and months spent in Cyprus
in the last 36 months, and confirmation that you do not fall under the
MSCA 70% resubmission restriction with CYENS.</font></li>
</ol><div><font face="arial, sans-serif"><br></font></div>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0cm 8pt;line-height:107%"><font face="arial, sans-serif"><b>Deadline for Expressions of Interest:</b> <b>15 May 2026</b>
(Rolling review).<span lang="EN-GB"></span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0cm 8pt;line-height:107%"><font face="arial, sans-serif">Shortlisted candidates will be contacted within 7–10 days of
submission. We expect to work
closely with a small number of shortlisted candidates (typically 2–<span lang="EN-GB" style="">3</span>) to co-develop full MSCA
proposals.</font><font face="Aptos, sans-serif"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size:11pt;font-size:11pt"></span></font></p></div></div>