PhD Position: Software Architecture for Human-Centric AI Systems

Do you want to contribute and collaborate to shape the future of human-centric computing models and applications with an eye on society? Then keep reading, this fully funded PhD position at Vrije Universiteit (VU) Amsterdam may be for you!

Human-centric AI aims to steer the development and application of AI towards personal and social good while minimizing harm. It builds on the capabilities of generative AI and foundation model techniques and enhances their ability to be collaborative, adaptive, responsible, and explainable (abbreviated as CARE principles). Human-centric AI can enable effective human-AI teaming, leading to hybrid systems that yield more than the sum of their parts. However, as an emerging discipline, human-centric AI and its principles have resulted in a wide range of proposed systems, leading to a poorly understood landscape of requirements, benefits, and limitations. It remains challenging to design effective human-centric AI systems, i.e., systems that reliably achieve the CARE principles without substantially harming other important quality attributes (QAs) like maintainability or energy consumption. As a solution, the synthesis and curation of software architecture techniques like design decisions, architectural tactics, patterns, or reference architectures can enable practitioners to design human-centric systems, while supporting the reasoning about trade-offs between various quality attributes, e.g., explainability, maintainability, or energy consumption.

The Learning and Reasoning and the Software and Sustainability groups are looking for a joint PhD student in software architecture for human-centric AI. The project will survey the emerging landscape of systems in human-centric AI, investigate how to systematically organize them into modular building blocks, and from there into reusable software architecture techniques. The project will investigate how the various design decisions influence the CARE principles, as well as other QAs like maintainability, evolvability, or performance efficiency. Taking a system perspective that is shaped by quality attribute trade-offs, the PhD student will synthesize and evaluate software architecture design techniques to support practitioners building such systems. To bridge the gap between these two fields, the PhD student will be supported by one supervisor with extensive human-centric AI expertise (Dr. Filip Ilievski) and one supervisor with extensive software architecture expertise (Dr. Justus Bogner).

Your duties

• shape and refine the indicated research topic according to your interests
• conduct research on the indicated topic using a variety of research methods
• publish the results as scientific papers in prestigious SE and / or AI venues
• attend suitable conferences to present the research
• support BSc / MSc teaching and supervision activities in the department

Requirements:

As a university, we strive for equal opportunities for all, recognising that diversity takes many forms. We believe that diversity in all its complexity is invaluable for the quality of our teaching, research and service. We are always looking for talent with diverse backgrounds and experiences. This also means that we are committed to creating an inclusive community so that we can use diversity as an asset.

We realise that each individual brings a unique set of skills, expertise and mindset. Therefore we are happy to invite anyone who recognises themselves in the profile to apply, even if you do not meet all the requirements.

• a strong MSc degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Artificial Intelligence, Data Science, or a related field
• at least foundational knowledge in both SE and AI, but more advanced knowledge in one of the two areas is expected
• solid programming abilities, e.g., in Python
• excellent communication skills in English (verbal and written)
• motivated team player that shows initiative to drive their own research
• experience with foundational language or vision models is a bonus
• experience with human-centric AI is a bonus
• experience with empirical research methods is a bonus
• prior publications are a bonus
• industry experience (especially with AI-enabled systems) is a bonus

Salary Benefits:

A challenging position in a socially engaged organisation. At VU Amsterdam, you contribute to education, research and service for a better world. And that is valuable. So in return for your efforts, we offer you:

• a salary of minimum € 2.901,00 (PhD) and maximum € 3.707,00 (PhD) gross per month, on a full-time basis. This is based on UFO profile PhD candidate. The exact salary depends on your education and experience.
• a position for at least 0.8 FTE. Your employment contract will initially last 18 months. After a satisfactory evaluation of the initial appointment, the contract will be extended to a total duration of 4 years.

We also offer you attractive fringe benefits and regulations. Some examples:

• a full-time 38-hour working week comes with a holiday leave entitlement of 232 hours per year. If you choose to work 40 hours, you have 96 extra holiday leave hours on an annual basis. For part-timers, this is calculated pro rata.
• 8% holiday allowance and 8.3% end-of-year bonus
• solid pension scheme (ABP)
• contribution to commuting expenses
• optional model for designing a personalized benefits package

De Boelelaan 1111