The Qualcomm – UvA lab, established as part of the Informatics Institute, invites applications for a PhD-position in novel data efficient deep learning architectures.

Convolutional neural networks have revolutionized fields such as speech recognition and computer vision. Convolutions are efficient because they share parameters and implement equivariance with respect to translation, implying the same filters can be used anywhere in an image to detect an object. Equivariance with respect to translations can be generalized to other groups, such as rotations leading to even more parameter sharing and thus data efficiency*. The PhD candidate or postdoctoral researcher will study extensions of this idea, namely to exploit symmetries and other prior knowledge to design more data efficient convolutional networks.

What is requested for the project is a good understanding of deep neural networks and computer vision. A local, national and international training program will be part of the PhD. The candidate will be part of the QUVA-lab with the target is to perform the scientific research published in the best conferences, and to apply for patents awarded in the patent program.

* T.S. Cohen, M. Welling, Steerable CNNs. International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR), 2017

• PhD candiate: M.Sc. in Computer Science, emphasizing computer vision and machine learning;
• postdoctoral researcher: PhD in machine learning;
• proven research experience, preferably with publication in top-tier international conferences or journals;
• solid knowledge of programming in Python and C/C++ programming;
• excellent knowledge of the English language.

The appointment will be full-time (38 hours a week) for a period of four years (initial employment is 18 months). Periodic evaluations will be held after 9 and 14 months, and upon positive evaluation, the appointment will be extended to a total of 48 months. The appointment must lead to a dissertation (PhD thesis). An educational plan that includes attendance of courses, summer and/or winter schools, and national and international meetings will be drafted for the PhD candidate. The PhD candidate is also expected to assist in teaching of undergraduate students.

The salary is in accordance with the university regulations for academic personnel and will range from €2,222 (first year) up to a maximum of €2,840 (last year) before tax per month (scale P) based on a full-time appointment.. There are also secondary benefits, such as 8% holiday allowance per year and the end of year allowance of 8.3%. The Collective Labour Agreement for Dutch Universities is applicable. 

The appointment will be full-time (38 hours a week) for two years (initial employment is 12 months and after a positive evaluation, the appointment will be extended further with 12 months). The gross monthly salary will be in accordance with the University regulations for academic personnel, and will range from €2.588 up to a maximum of €4.757 (scale 10/11) based on a full-time appointment depending on qualifications, expertise and on the number of years of professional experience.

There are also secondary benefits, such as 8% holiday allowance per year and the end of year allowance of 8.3%. The Collective Labour Agreement for Dutch Universities is applicable. 

Some of the things we have to offer:

• competitive pay and excellent benefits;
• extremely friendly, interactive and international working environment;
• new building near the city center of one of Europe's most beautiful and lively cities;
• direct access to high-end computing facilities.

English is the working language within the Informatics Institute. Moreover, since Amsterdam is a very international city where almost everybody speaks and understands English, candidates need not to worry about the language barrier. Living conditions in Amsterdam are considered to be among the very best in Europe.

University of Amsterdam

With over 5,000 employees, 30,000 students and a budget of more than 600 million euros, the University of Amsterdam (UvA) is an intellectual hub within the Netherlands. Teaching and research at the UvA are conducted within seven faculties: Humanities, Social and Behavioural Sciences, Economics and Business, Law, Science, Medicine and Dentistry. Housed on four city campuses in or near the heart of Amsterdam, where disciplines come together and interact, the faculties have close links with thousands of researchers and hundreds of institutions at home and abroad.  

The UvA’s students and employees are independent thinkers, competent rebels who dare to question dogmas and aren’t satisfied with easy answers and standard solutions. To work at the UvA is to work in an independent, creative, innovative and international climate characterised by an open atmosphere and a genuine engagement with the city of Amsterdam and society.

Informatics Institute

The Faculty of Science holds a leading position internationally and participates in a large number of cooperative programs with universities, research institutes and companies. The faculty has around 6,000 students and 1,600 members of staff in eight research institutes and a diverse set of support services. Many projects are externally funded, either from Dutch and international sources both public and private. Since September 2010, the faculty resides in a new building at the Science Park in Amsterdam, one of the largest centres of academic research in the Netherlands.

The mission of the Informatics Institute of the faculty of Science is to perform curiosity driven and use-inspired fundamental research in Computer Science. The research in the institute involves complex information systems at large, with a focus on Collaborative, Data Driven, Computational and Intelligent Systems, all with a strong interactive component.

The QUVA-Lab is funded equally by Qualcomm, San Diego, and the University of Amsterdam. Its mission is to conduct internationally leading research in the areas of computer vision and machine learning. It holds 3 postdoctoral researchers, 9 PhD candidates and 4 professors participate on topics ranging from tracking in computer vision, to story telling from video, to hyper-parameter tuning of deep networks.

The Qualcomm – UvA lab, established as part of the Informatics Institute at the University of Amsterdam, invites applications for a PhD-position in novel data efficient deep learning architectures.