postdoctoral Project Staff Member

You want to understand how things are connected and make a fundamental impact? We offer an environment where you can realize your full potential. At one of Europe’s largest and most modern business and economics universities. On a campus where quality of work is also quality of life. We are looking for support at the

Institute for Data, Process and Knowledge Management
Fulltime, 40 hours/week
Starting from August 01, 2025, and ending after 3.5 years   You want to participate in Austria's largest joint project on fundamentals of Artificial Intelligence and contribute to WU Vienna’s vision on boosting AI?   The successful candidate shall both contribute to WU's vision in boosting AI in research and teaching [1] within the FWF-funded Austrian Cluster of Excellence "Bilateral AI" [2] (BILAI). The position is financed for a duration of 3.5 years initially through BILAI's project funding, with an option to further extension.   As such, we provide an excellent opportunity for ambitious postdoctoral candidates to both contribute to WU's teaching and research portfolio in the area of AI as well as part-taking in Austria's largest joint project on fundamentals of AI, with a particular focus on devising "bilateral" combinations of symbolic and subsymbolic AI, towards next generation "broad AI" solutions to current complex societal and ecologic challenges. The position specifically targets career development for young researchers, e.g. by actively participating and contribute to the BILAI postdoctoral training activities: Postdoctoral positions in BILAI provide opportunities for advanced training, mentorded and supported by BILAI, to build up their career in  a) receiving benefits from the BILAI network (such as specifically BILAI's Postdoc Association  b) receiving mentorship for own grant-writing,  c) working in collaboration with and assisting in supervision of BILAI students.    Additionally the postdoc can benefit from WU's extensive personal development activities, such as career counselling, postdoc peergroups, etc.  WU and the whole BILAI consortium aim to reach out to excellent postdocs from all over the world with a special focus on diversity (e.g. female researchers) and applicants from underrepresented countries.   Information on the Host institute: In our research group on Data Management, led by Prof. Axel Polleres within the Institute for Data, Process and Knowledge Management [3] at WU Vienna, we are convinced that the future of Artificial Intelligence and Datamanagement will be shaped by Open Knowledge Repositories such as Knowledge Graphs, as well as combined symbolic and subsymbolic approaches (Hybrid AI) that leverage both unstructured text data, structured data, as well as other multi-modal data, inline, for instance, with respective recent AI roadmaps [4,5]  As such, we are looking for candidates who are willing to work in an international, interdisciplinary team at the intersection of 

• Datamanagement
• Knowledge Graphs
• Artificial Intelligence

to jointly develop our vision of "Natural" Data Understanding and Intelligent Data Management. In our group we use a mix of approaches to combining methods to integrate and automate quality improvement of structured and non-structured data with a focus on leveraging and building Knowledge Graphs [6] as a backbone for hybrid AI and sustainable Data Governance in the age of AI. The institute also parttakes in and drives interdisciplinary research and networking activities on applying AI in various business domains through WU's recently founded Applied AI network [7] and provides the necessary computing infrastructure through WU's cross-departamental Research Institute for Computational Methods [8].

What to expect

• Research life: Collaborate with your colleagues on ongoing research projects at the Institute. Support Institute research projects and set up your own projects with a focus on bringing the above outlined vision forward. 
• Supervise students: Advise students and (co-)supervise their theses 
• Build a personal network: build your personal network with contacts in research, industry, and business within the institute’s excellent international collaboration network
• Organizational and administrative support: Support the management of BILAI within WU and in collaboration with the project’s academic partner network, (co-)organize workshops, summer schools as well as national and international conferences we run together with the institute team and the BILAI consortium.
• Exciting research on topics around Foundations of Artificial Intelligence, Intelligent Data Management and Data Governance, Knowledge Graphs, and their applications in Industry and Business.
  • Opportunity to explore your own interests and contributing to the BILAI vision 
  • Interdisciplinary research particularly focusing on foundational research combining different AI approaches is encouraged.
  • Teamwork with intensive research mentoring through the BILAI network
  • Participation in international top conferences or topic-related summer schools 
  • Profit from and become part of our international research network with the opportunity for research visits to network partners.

• Teaching: gaining teaching experience in independently taught courses is possible and encouraged.

What you have to offer

• Academic degree: 
  For qualifying for the postdoc position, you will have completed a PhD, or doctorate by the starting date. Your respective degree is in one of the following subject areas: 
  • Computer Science, Digital Economy, Information Technology, Software Engineering, Information Systems, Business Informatics, Mathematics, Social and Economic sciences (with a focus on areas related to the above research vision).
• Research experience: We expect a proven research track record in terms of high-quality, peer-reviewed publications, as well as a motivating research statements that explains how your expertise contributes to the institute’s and BILAI’s vision. Experience in at least one of the following research areas and their combinations is a particular advantage: 
  • Logical reasoning and Symbolic AI
  • Machine Learning and Subsymbolic AI
  • Semantic Web Technologies and Knowledge Graphs
  • Scalable and Decentralized Data Processing
  • Information Extraction and Data Mining
  • Data Science, Data Analytics and Statistics (including R or Python)
  • Database theory, Database query languages and query processing
  • AI and ML architectures and engineering

• Language skills: You are fluent and able to express yourself very well in both spoken and written English. German language skills, or demonstrated willingness to learn languages is a plus
• Willingness to use multimedia teaching methods: You are prepared to use multimedia teaching and innovative learning formats. 

  Do you want to join the  Institute for Data, Process and Knowledge Management and the BILAI network? Then please submit your application. By submitting your application, you agree with your application being shared also with members of the BILAI admission committee from other partner universities in the BILAI network.   The following documents must be submitted (in English) by the call deadline:

• Scientific CV, including academic degrees, previous employment (if any), list of publications, lectures, awards and distinctions. Career-breaks (e.g., unemployment, parental/health leave) should also be included to ensure fair assessment based on effective ‘academic age’.
• Submitted doctoral thesis or pre-final draft version (in case the PhD is not yet finished we require an accompanying statement by the thesis main supervisor confirming feasibility of finishing the PhD by early autumn of 2025 latest)
• Transcript of your ongoing or finished Doctoral Study
• Research statement, outlining the planned research, goals and significance, detailing the connection between symbolic and sub-symbolic aspects and including a rough indication of timeline and key milestones. The research topic must either refer to specific projects for which postdoc opportunities were posted, or it must be described how it fits in the research plan of BILAI in a broader sense. Please refer in your application to specific Research Modules of the BILAI project, cf. https://www.bilateral-ai.net/research-modules/, with a special focus on RM1.
• Selected supervisors from the BILAI consortium, indicating the main supervisor and a list of possible secondary supervisors from the list of BILAI's Key researchers, cf. https://www.bilateral-ai.net/consortium/. For this specific position located at the institute of Data, Process and Knowledge Management at WU Vienna, the main supervisor will be Prof. Axel Polleres.
• Career motivation, discussing mid-term career objectives, motivation for the choice of research project, justification of the choice of host institutions, and foreseen impact on the future career.
• Contact details of three reference persons who are willing to provide a letter of recommendation. The letters should be sent to a dedicated email address before the application deadline. 
• Statement of teaching experiences and interests (if applicable), possibly including teaching evaluations.
• Additional documents may be requested as part of the application process.

We are looking forward to hearing from you! If you have any questions regarding the position or application documents prior to application, don’t hesitate to contact me for further information at Prof. Axel Polleres  axel.polleres[at]wu.ac.at with the subject: "[BILAI Postdoc position]"

What we offer you

• Inspiring campus life with over 2,400 employees in research, teaching, and administration and approximately 21,500 students
• A modern campus with spectacular architecture in the heart of Vienna
• Excellent accessibility by public transportation
• Meaningful work in an open-minded, inclusive, and family-friendly environment
• Flexible working hours
• A wide range of benefits, from an in-house medical officer to athletic activities and a meal allowance to a variety of employee discounts

Curious? Visit our website and find out more at www.wu.ac.at/benefits.

The minimum monthly gross salary amounts to €4,932.90 (14 times per year). This salary may be adjusted based on equivalent prior work experience. In addition, we offer a wide range of attractive social benefits.   Relevant Links for additional information: 1.        https://doingthingswithdata.wordpress.com/2024/05/22/boosting-ai-in-research-and-teaching-at-vienna-university-of-economics-and-business/  2.        https://www.bilateral-ai.net/  3.        https://ai.wu.ac.at/  4.        https://arxiv.org/abs/1908.02624 5.        https://cra.org/ccc/ai-roadmap-executive-summary/ 6.        https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-01918-0 7.        https://www.wu.ac.at/en/applied-ai-network  8.        https://www.wu.ac.at/en/firm    Do you want to join the WU team?
Then please submit your application by June 08, 2025 (ID 2405).
We are looking forward to hearing from you!