Connectionists: PhD in Machine Learning (joint between Clopath and Pascanu)

[Clopath, Claudia]

PhD position in Machine Learning in the Clopath lab under the joint supervision of Dr Claudia Clopath (Imperial College London) and Dr Razvan Pascanu (DeepMind London)


-----------------Description--------------

This is a 3 year PhD position at Imperial College London. The position will be co-supervised by Dr. Claudia Clopath (head of the lab) and Dr. Razvan Pascanu (Research Scientist at DeepMind). The student will be based in the Clopath lab. The focus of the PhD will be on machine learning while drawing inspiration from computational neuroscience. In particular the main themes will revolve around Deep Learning and Deep Reinforcement Learning. The research will be published at conferences such as NeurIPS, ICML or ICLR. An *incomplete* list of topics of interest could include:

  *   Theory of Deep Learning/Deep Reinforcement Learning
     *   Understanding learning dynamics
     *   Representational power of neural networks
  *   Exploiting our understanding of dopamine for training RL systems
  *   Topics around introducing structure in neural networks (e.g. Graph-Nets)
  *   Optimization for neural networks (theory/application)
  *   Understanding memory in recurrent models/attention based models (improve the memory capacity of RNNs)
  *   Meta-learning/Continual learning or exploration in RL systems

Although we welcome the student’s suggestion for potential projects.


---------------Requirements--------------------

The perfect candidate has a strong background in maths, physics, engineering or related fields. Machine Learning background is a plus but not necessary. The candidate should have strong programming skills (knowledge of tensorflow/pytorch/jax could be a plus but not required). Interest in neural networks research and experience is a plus.


The position will be decided in two rounds. First, the candidate will apply to the lab (see below), and if accepted, they will then apply to the graduate program of Imperial College London for funding. Note that the funding is competitive and that UK citizens have a higher chance by nature of the system.


------------ The lab ------------

 The Computational Neuroscience Laboratory is very young and dynamic, and publishes in prestigious journals and conferences. It is part of the Department of Bioengineering, which conducts state-of-the-art multidisciplinary research. The lab is at Imperial College London, the 3rd ranked university in Europe, is in the top 10 worldwide, and is located in the city centre of London. More information can be found at: http://www.bg.ic.ac.uk/research/c.clopath/


DeepMind is a company focusing on AI and ML research, with world-wide recognized expertise. It research centers around Deep Learning and Reinforcement Learning, with successes such as AlphaGo, first AI winning against a human professional at the game of Go. More information here: https://deepmind.com/about/. For more info on Razvan Pascanu’s work see https://sites.google.com/view/razp.


----------------- How to apply:-----------------

Candidates should send a single pdf file, consisting of a 1 to 2-page motivation letter followed by a CV (including publication list) to clopathlab.imperial at gmail.com, with the subject containing 'PhD_ML_2022'. In addition, candidates should organize two letters of reference to be sent to clopathlab.imperial at gmail.com, with the subject containing 'PhD_ML_2022'. The position is open until filled but the earlier applications will be considered first.

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