The Institute for Logic, Language and Computation (ILLC) invites applications for a fully funded four-year PhD position in the Computational Social Choice Group led by Ulle Endriss.

This position is part of the Collective Information Project, which will eventually employ a total of five junior researchers. It is funded by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) under the VICI scheme.

The aim of the Collective Information Project is to improve our understanding of how best to aggregate information supplied by several independent agents and how the structural properties of the kind of information we wish to aggregate influences the performance of different aggregation mechanisms. Potential applications range from political elections and recommender systems (aggregation of preferences), to crowdsourcing campaigns (aggregation of expert judgments), to knowledge engineering (aggregation of ontologies).

You will become a member of the Computational Social Choice Group, the research agenda of which is dedicated to the design and analysis of methods for collective decision making. The group’s research is both mathematical and conceptual in nature. Much of it regularly gets published in the leading conference proceedings and journals in Artificial Intelligence. At the same time, the group emphasises interdisciplinarity and often reaches out to other fields, particularly Economics, Political Science, and Philosophy.

You will be expected to contribute to this broad research agenda. Specifically, we will ask you to perform the following tasks:

• to complete and defend a PhD thesis within the official appointment duration of four years;
• to regularly present research results at international workshops and conferences, and to publish them in conference proceedings and journals;
• to participate in and to contribute to the organisation of research activities and events at the Institute, such as workshops and colloquia.

All PhD candidates at the ILLC furthermore are expected to make a small contribution to the institute’s educational mission, e.g., by working as teaching assistants for courses in their area of expertise and by assisting with the supervision of student research projects.

This PhD position will be embedded in the ILLC’s PhD Programme, which offers training in a range of transferable skills that are relevant for a successful research career.

You should hold, or expect to obtain before the start of your appointment, a Master’s degree in a relevant discipline, such as Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence, Mathematics, Logic, or Economics. Candidates with an interdisciplinary background are particularly encouraged to apply (over the years, members of the Computational Social Choice Group have included people with first degrees in Computer Science, Mathematics, Philosophy, Cognitive Science, and Operations Research). Furthermore, you should possess:

• an excellent academic track record;
• a serious interest in pursuing fundamental research of an interdisciplinary nature;
• good writing and presentation skills;
• good social and organisational skills;
• full professional proficiency in spoken and written English.

Prior exposure to relevant topics at the interface of Economics and Computer Science, particularly Computational Social Choice and Algorithmic Game Theory, is an advantage, but certainly not a requirement. The same holds for relevant topics in Artificial Intelligence, particularly in the areas of Multiagent Systems and Knowledge Representation and Reasoning.

Please note that knowledge of the Dutch language is not required for this position, nor is it required for being able to live in Amsterdam. However, PhD candidates at the ILLC have the opportunity to attend Dutch language classes if they wish.

The successful candidate will be employed by the Faculty of Science at the University of Amsterdam on a fixed-term full-time position (38 hours per week).

The appointment is intended to be for a period of four years. The initial contract will be for 18 months. This will be extended with a further 30 months after a positive evaluation.

The gross monthly salary amounts to €2,325 during the first year, rising to €2,972 during the fourth year, and will be supplemented with an 8% holiday allowance and an 8.3% end-of-year bonus. The Collective Labour Agreement for Dutch Universities applies.

The starting date is negotiable but should be between 1 September 2019 and 1 January 2020.

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.

http://www.uva.nl/en/home

Institute for Logic, Language and Computation (ILLC)

The Institute for Logic, Language and Computation (ILLC) at the University of Amsterdam invites applications for a fully funded four-year PhD position in the Computational Social Choice Group led by Ulle Endriss.

The ILLC is an interdisciplinary research institute where logicians, mathematicians, computer scientists, cognitive scientists, and philosophers collaborate. It offers an international research environment with world-class faculty in all of its areas of specialisation. The institute is located in the beautiful city of Amsterdam, renown for its historic system of canals, its laid-back cosmopolitan atmosphere, and its excellent connections to the rest of Europe and the world.

http://www.illc.uva.nl/