Connectionists: PhD Student Position in Reinforcement Learning at Tampere University, Finland

[Joni Pajarinen (TAU)]

We are seeking a talented PhD student for a four year fully funded position at Tampere University, Finland

with strong interest in Reinforcement Learning and 

* Robot Learning
* Reinforcement Learning under Partial Observability

The main task of the PhD student will be to develop new state-of-the-art reinforcement learning (RL) methods that allow agents, or, robots to operate in unstructured partially observable real world environments found in household robotics, agile manufacturing, work sites of mobile heavy machines, elderly care, handling dangerous materials, or even disaster scenarios such as Fukujima.

The research focus will be on developing reinforcement learning method techniques related to partial observability, memory representations, exploration, Bayesian reinforcement learning, and Monte Carlo tree search. The exact direction of the research is chosen depending on your experience and interests.

Please relate clearly to (some of) these research topics in your Letter of Motivation.

Outstanding students and researchers from the areas of Reinforcement Learning and related areas including Machine Learning, Control Engineering, Computer Vision, Robotics, Statistics & Optimization, or Mathematics & Physics are welcome to apply. The candidate is expected to conduct independent research and at the same time contribute to the topics listed above. Successful candidates can furthermore be given the opportunity to work with undergraduate, M.Sc. and PhD students.

The research group collaborates at Tampere University with research groups in computer vision, robotics, mobile heavy machines, manufacturing, finance, physics, and human-robot interaction, and, internationally with research groups in reinforcement learning, imitation learning, robot learning, multi-agent systems, and robot motion planning. Moreover, two of the PhD students in the research group are located at the Intelligent Autonomous Systems institute at TU Darmstadt, Germany so there will be ample opportunities for international collaboration.


WE OFFER

The position will be filled for a fixed-term period of maximum four (4) years. The starting date is 2 March 2020 or as mutually agreed.

The salary will be based on both the job requirements and the employee’s personal performance in accordance with the salary system of Finnish universities. According to the criteria applied to teaching and research staff, the position of a Doctoral Researcher is placed on level 2—4 of the job requirements scale. A typical starting salary for Doctoral Researchers is approximately 2300 EUR/month. The salary increases with experience.

We offer a wide range of staff benefits, such as occupational health care, flexible working hours, excellent sports facilities on campus and several restaurants and cafés on campus with staff discounts.


HOW TO APPLY

Please submit your application through our online recruitment system using this link:
https://tuni.rekrytointi.com/paikat/?o=A_A&jid=312

The closing date for applications is 26.1.2020 (23:59 EEST (GMT+3)).


Please write your application and all the accompanying documentation in English and attach them in PDF format.

Please attach only the following documents to your application: 
* A letter of motivation and description of your research interests (max. 1 page)
* Curriculum vitae according to the TENK template (including the contact details of two referees).
* A list of publications (if any) as a part of the curriculum vitae
* PDF copy of your MSc and BSc degree certificates, including transcripts of all university records and their English translations (Finnish and Swedish certificates are also accepted)

For further information, please contact:

Assistant Professor, Research Group Leader, Joni Pajarinen, joni.pajarinen at tuni.fi, tel. +358 50 4771303 


ABOUT THE RESEARCH GROUP

The research group lead by Assistant Professor Joni Pajarinen operates in the intersection of artificial intelligence and robotics. In particular, we focus on reinforcement learning, robotic manipulation, decision making under partial observability, imitation learning, and decision making in multi-agent systems. The goal of the research group is to help robots understand what they need to learn in order to perform their assigned tasks, and, thus, make robots capable of operating on their own and pro-actively help humans. To accomplish these goals the research group develops novel decision making methods and uses these methods to solve unsolved robotic tasks. For more information, please see
https://research.tuni.fi/liar/


ABOUT TAMPERE UNIVERSITY

Tampere University is one of the top universities in Finland, and is well known for its research and teaching. The university has recently invested heavily in intelligent machines and has strong industrial collaboration with companies developing semi-autonomous machines. The research group is part of the Computational Sciences unit, largest unit in the university. More information can be found from
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tampere_University


WORKING AND STUDYING IN FINLAND

Finland has been assessed to be among the best countries in the world with respect to many quality of life indicators, including being the overall #1 country in human wellbeing. Finland is among the leading countries in ICT & Digitalization, from 5G networks to financial technology, artificial intelligence and AR/VR innovations to IoT, digital education and health solutions. Finland’s booming gaming industry is led by companies like Supercell (Clash of Clans) and Rovio (Angry Birds). Almost everyone in Finland understands English. More information about Finland can be obtained from
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finland