Connectionists: [Jobs] Last call! Multiple PhD positions in Neuroexplicit models

[Mariya Toneva]

The Research Training Group 2853 “Neuroexplicit Models of Language, Vision,
and Action” is looking for

Multiple PhD Students - Fall 2025

Neuroexplicit models combine neural and human-interpretable (“explicit”)
models in order to overcome the limitations that each model class has
separately. They include neurosymbolic models, which combine neural and
symbolic models, but also e.g. combinations of neural and physics-based
models. In the RTG, we will improve the state of the art in natural
language processing (“Language”), computer vision (“Vision”), and planning
and reinforcement learning (“Action”). We also develop novel machine
learning techniques for neuroexplicit models (“Foundations”). Our
overarching aim is to contribute to a better understanding of the
cross-cutting design principles of effective neuroexplicit models through
interdisciplinary collaboration.

We are now filling the last few remaining positions to grow to a total of 24
PhD students by the end of 2025. You will join a very international crowd
of sixteen PhD students and one postdoc who are already being funded by the
RTG. Through the inclusion of ~15 associated PhD students and postdocs
funded from other sources, it will be one of the largest research centers
on neuroexplicit or neurosymbolic models in the world.

The RTG brings together researchers at Saarland University, the Max Planck
Institute for Informatics, the Max Planck Institute for Software Systems,
the CISPA Helmholtz Center for Information Security, and the German
Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI). All of these
institutions are collocated on the same campus in Saarbrücken, Germany.

The positions will be funded for four years at the TV-L E13 100% pay scale.
They are intended to start in September 2025, but could start a little
earlier or later depending on the student’s availability. You should have
or be about to complete an MSc degree in computer science or a related
field and have demonstrated expertise in one of the research areas of the
RTG, e.g. through an excellent Master’s thesis or relevant publications.

The RTG is part of the Saarland Informatics Campus, one of the leading
centers for research in computer science, artificial intelligence, and
natural language processing in Europe. The Saarland Informatics Campus
brings together 900 researchers and 2500 students from 81 countries. The
CISPA Helmholtz Center, located on the same campus, is home to an
additional 350 researchers and on track to grow to 800 by 2026. Researchers
at SIC and CISPA are part of the ELLIS network and have been awarded more
than 40 ERC grants.

Each PhD student in the RTG will be jointly supervised by two PhD advisors
from the list of Principal Investigators below. Each student will freely
define their own research topic; we encourage the choice of topics that
cross the traditional boundaries of research fields. Students may be
affiliated with Saarland University or with one of the participating
institutes.

Vera Demberg, Saarland University - Computational Linguistics

Jörg Hoffmann, Saarland University - AI Planning

Dietrich Klakow, Saarland University - Natural Language Processing

Alexander Koller, Saarland University - Computational Linguistics

Bernt Schiele, MPI for Informatics - Computer Vision, Machine Learning

Philipp Slusallek, DFKI and Saarland University - Computer Graphics,
Artificial Intelligence

Christian Theobalt, MPI for Informatics - Visual Computing, Machine Learning

Mariya Toneva, MPI for Software Systems - Computational Neuroscience,
Machine Learning

Isabel Valera, Saarland University - Machine Learning

Jilles Vreeken, CISPA - Machine Learning, Causality

Joachim Weickert, Saarland University - Mathematical Data Analysis

Verena Wolf, DFKI and Saarland University - Modeling and Simulation,
Reinforcement Learning

Ellie Pavlick, Brown University and Google AI, is joining us regularly as a
Mercator Fellow.

Please send your application by May 7th 2025 to apply at neuroexplicit.org and
include the reference number W2639. We aim to conduct job interviews in
June 2025.

For more details on the position, including what materials to submit with
your application, please see our website:
https://www.neuroexplicit.org/jobs/
<https://www.neuroexplicit.org/jobs/#phd-2023>
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