PhD Position on Interpretable and Verifiable Communication of NLP Assistant Decisions

We are looking for a PhD candidate to work on interpretable and verifiable communication of natural language intelligent assistant decisions within the Language Technology Lab and the Hybrid Intelligence Center.

Join our team!
The Language Technology Lab at the University of Amsterdam, in connection with the Hybrid Intelligence Center, is seeking a PhD candidate to research human-centric AI assistants that can communicate NLP decisions in interpretable and verifiable manner.

Some expert tasks can benefit from assistance from automated systems; for example, assigning reviewers to academic papers. As the cost of errors is high and the expert takes responsibility for the result, the expert must verify the system output and often reject or modify it. This can end up more time-consuming than working without such an assistant at all. We pose the problem as communication and develop an agent that learns to optimize and adapt its recommendations and supporting evidence generated, in order to be most effective for the expert to verify. A full-capability system would adapt to explicit and implicit feedback from the expert as well as to community-level effects.

This project is at the intersection of natural language processing, machine learning, communication, and user research. While we aim to develop generally-applicable methods, we will focus on a scientific assistant use case.

Note that this job opening is one of several job openings on the HI page with job openings. You can apply to more than just this one. If you do so, please inform the Hybrid Intelligence Centre’s Project Manager via email of the projects you are applying to.

What are you going to do?
You will research hybrid, human-centric assistants that can communicate NLP decisions in easy-to-verify ways. In addition to your research, you are expected to fulfill some additional roles and tasks within the lab and the research center as listed below.

Tasks and responsibilities:

• leading state-of-the art research on the project described;
• collaborating with researchers in the Hybrid Intelligence Center and the LTL,
• publishing academic papers in peer-reviewed international conferences and journals in NLP, ML, and related fields;
• presenting your work in national and international venues;
• assisting in teaching duties, for example as teaching assistant for bachelor and masters courses, and supervising bachelor and masters final projects;
• engaging in lab, institute, and research center activities, such as seminars and various rotating organizational roles;
• completing your PhD thesis within the appointment duration of four years.

Your main supervisor will be dr. Vlad Niculae (UvA). Within the Hybrid Intelligence Center, you will also be co-supervised by dr. Pradeep Kumar Murukannaiah (TU Delft) and prof. dr. Antske Fokkens (VU Amsterdam).

Your profile
Essential:

• A Master’s degree (completed or near completion) with a thesis in Natural Language Processing, Machine Learning, Computer Science, or similar relevant areas;
• Curiosity and motivation for pursuing fundamental academic research;
• A good background in natural language processing and machine learning;
• Solid programming skills;
• Professional command of the English language;
• A commitment to maintaining an inclusive, collaborative, diverse, and supportive work environment.

Nice to have:

• Background in user studies, surveys, or similar research involving people.
• Interdisciplinary research experience.

Interdisciplinary collaborations and backgrounds are appreciated, especially along fields related to communication science. If this describes you, we encourage your application.

If you are interested but unsure if you are qualified, please contact dr. Vlad Niculae before applying. If your Master’s degree is near completion, it must be completed before the start date. Knowledge of the Dutch language is not required for this position, but can help for living and working in Amsterdam. The UvA provides the opportunity to attend Dutch language classes.

We aim to create hybrid intelligence for everyone, see also our Diversity Statement. To do this, we need an inclusive and diverse team of researchers. We especially encourage people from underrepresented groups to apply for this job.We care strongly about respecting work-life balance and contractual hours.

Our offer
A temporary contract for 38 hours per week for the duration of 4 years (the initial contract will be for a period of 18 months and after satisfactory evaluation it will be extended for a total duration of 4 years). The preferred starting date is September 2025. This should lead to a dissertation (PhD thesis). We will draft an educational plan that includes attendance of courses and (international) meetings. We also expect you to assist in teaching undergraduates and master students.

The gross monthly salary, based on 38 hours per week and dependent on relevant experience, will range from €2,901 in the first year to €3,707 in the last year (scale P). This does not include 8% holiday allowance and 8,3% year-end allowance. The UFO profile ‘PhD Candidate’ is applicable.

A favourable tax agreement, the ‘30% ruling’, may apply to non-Dutch applicants. The Collective Labour Agreement of Universities of the Netherlands is applicable.

Besides the salary and a vibrant and challenging environment at Science Park we offer you multiple fringe benefits:

• 232 holiday hours per year (based on fulltime) and extra holidays between Christmas and 1 January;
• multiple courses to follow from our Teaching and Learning Centre;
• a complete educational program for PhD students;
• multiple courses on topics such as leadership for academic staff;
• multiple courses on topics such as time management, handling stress and an online learning platform with 100+ different courses;
• 7 weeks birth leave (partner leave) with 100% salary;
• partly paid parental leave;
• the possibility to set up a workplace at home;
• a pension at ABP for which UvA pays two third part of the contribution;
• the possibility to follow courses to learn Dutch;
• help with housing for a studio or small apartment when you’re moving from abroad.

Are you curious to read more about our extensive package of secondary employment benefits, take a look here.

Where you will work
The Faculty of Science has a student body of around 8,000, as well as 1,800 members of staff working in education, research or support services. Researchers and students at the Faculty of Science are fascinated by every aspect of how the world works, be it elementary particles, the birth of the universe or the functioning of the brain.

The Informatics Institute IvI) has the mission to perform curiosity-driven and use-inspired fundamental research in Computer Science. The main research themes are Artificial Intelligence, Computational Science and Systems and Network Engineering. Our research involves complex information systems at large, with a focus on collaborative, data driven, computational and intelligent systems, all with a strong interactive component. This position is supervised by dr. Vlad Niculae, senior assistant professor in the Language Technology Lab. The LTL is a research group focusing on information access from natural language data. Our work ranges from basic research in natural language processing to key applications in human language technology, and covers areas such as machine translation, summarization, question answering, language modeling, and image captioning.

The Hybrid Intelligence Center is a collaboration of top AI researchers from the VU Amsterdam, the University of Amsterdam, the TU Delft, and the Universities of Groningen, Leiden, and Utrecht, in areas such as machine learning, knowledge representation, natural language understanding & generation, information retrieval, multi-agent systems, psychology, multimodal interaction, social robotics, AI & law and ethics of technology. The HI center is a national and international focus point for research on all aspects of Hybrid Intelligent systems.

Want to know more about our organisation? Read more about working at the University of Amsterdam.

If you feel the profile fits you, and you are interested in the job, we look forward to receiving your application. You can apply online via the red button. We accept applications until and including 18 May 2025.

Applications should include the following information (all files besides your cv should be submitted in one single pdf file):

• A detailed CV including the months (not just years) when referring to your education and work experience;
• A letter of motivation;
• A summary of, or a copy of, your Master’s thesis.
• A copy of your Master’s and Bachelor’s transcript/diploma.

In your letter of motivation (max. 2 pages), please make sure to

• motivate your choice for this position and your interest in the proposed project;
• indicate your preferred and your earliest starting date;
• sketch out some thoughts and ideas about how you would tackle the project.

If your MSc thesis is not finished or not in English, submit a brief summary in 1-4 pages. If your transcripts or diplomas are not available yet, please attach a note clearly stating which documents are not available, and when they will be available. This note can be in your own words.

Do not submit applications by e-mail.

A knowledge security check can be part of the selection procedure.
(for details: national knowledge security guidelines)

Only complete applications received within the response period via the link below will be considered.

The interviews will be held in the course of June and/or July 2025.

Do you have any questions or do you require additional information? Please contact:

• dr. Vlad Niculae, v.niculae@uva.nl

38 hours per week

Science Park 904