Connectionists: Postdoctoral positions at Mila in LLMs / Foundation Models - Deadline April 30, 2025

[Sarath Chandar]

Dear All,

At Chandar Lab <https://chandar-lab.github.io/> and Mila, the Quebec AI
Institute <https://mila.quebec/en>, we have four open postdoctoral
positions on the following topics:

*1. Postdoc position on large language models (LLMs)*

              Topics of interest include but not limited to better
pre-training methods, better fine-tuning methods, bias and fairness,
interpretability, safety and alignment, continual pre-training.

*2. Postdoc position on foundation models for biological data*

               Topics of interest include but not limited to foundation
models (both encoder and decoder models) for proteins, small molecules, and
genomics data, multi-modal foundation models for biological data, 3d
generative modelling, drug discovery.

                 For this position, we are looking for a candidate with
strong ML/LLM/Transformers/Foundation Models background. If you do not have
the biological domain background, but are interested in exploring AI for
science, this is a perfect position for you. In this position, you will be
working closely with our pharmaceutical partners who are experts in biology.

*3. Postdoc position on foundation models for time series data*

                  Topics of interest includes but not limited to better
sequential architectures, state space models, recurrent neural networks,
attention-free architectures, etc.

*4. Postdoc position on foundation models for Astrophysics*

              The topics of interest includes but not limited to recurrent
inference machines, Transformers, diffusion models for radio images in
Astrophysics .

Qualifications:

The ideal candidate for these positions

* Should have completed (or will soon complete) a PhD with experience in
Machine Learning, Deep Learning, Large Language Models, and Foundation
Models.

* Should have a track record of publishing at top international venues like
ICML, ICLR, NeurIPS, ACL, EMNLP, NAACL, etc.

* Should be interested in mentoring masters and PhDs on several research
projects.

* Should have a demonstrated ability to initiate new research projects and
have a desire to lead a research team.

* Should have experience in pre-training Transformers and LLMs, not just
finetuning them.

Duties - We expect the selected candidate to lead, publish, and present
research projects on the topics of interest, work with and mentor graduate
students, and participate in and lead grant applications.

*Recommendation Letters *- We will ask for names of 2 recommenders only for
candidates who are selected for an interview. So please talk to your
recommenders and have the letters ready when we contact them.

*Application timeline* - Applications are open until at least *April 30,
2025*. For inquiries please email Sarath Chandar: sarath.chandar at mila.quebec
and include "[postdoc ad]" in the email title.

*Where to apply?* - If you are interested in any of these positions, please
apply here
<https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdwnhXZcxYeSCnrhKZF4c3TH0D25NjQInyYR0XTYScDUDhyYQ/viewform?usp=preview>
before
30th April, 2025.

Regards,

Sarath Chandar
--
Sarath Chandar
Canada CIFAR AI chair, Mila
Canada Research Chair in Lifelong Machine Learning
Associate professor, Dept. of Computer and Software Engineering
Polytechnique Montréal
https://chandar-lab.github.io/
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