Research Associate in Interactive Artificial Intelligence

UE07: £40,247.00 - £47,874.00 Per Annum.

CSE / School of Informatics.

Fixed Term Contract - 2 Years.

Full Time - 35 Hours Per Week.

The School of Informatics is seeking a Research Associate in Interactive Artificial Intelligence. This post will be part of the Centre for AI for Assistive Autonomy, a mission-driven research centre established using a UKRI Turing AI World Leading Researcher Fellowship awarded to Prof Subramanian Ramamoorthy. 

The Opportunity:

The post-holder will be part of a foundations team within the Centre, whose focus will be on fundamental investigations into generative modelling of the full stack of human behaviour, from sensorimotor control to higher level cognitive decision making, to enable the development of person-centred and teachable autonomous systems within domains including assistive technologies for activities of daily living, task level autonomy in surgical robotics and autonomous vehicles. 

In addition to the Centre Director (Ramamoorthy), the post holder will have the opportunity to collaborate with colleagues in a wide range of specialties across the University, including in machine learning and vision (e.g. Fisher, Mac Aodha, Bilen, Sevilla-Lara, Vergari), probabilistic programming (e.g. Narayanaswamy, Kammar, Belle), natural language understanding and interaction (e.g. Lascarides, Lapata, Gal), computational cognitive science and neuroscience (e.g. Lucas, Hennig, Nolan, Rajendran), as well as in robotics and neurotechnology (e.g. Vijayakumar, Nazarpour) and engineering of novel sensing and devices (Prodromakis, Koutsos, Amjadi). Beyond the university, the Centre will pursue collaborations with international teams including at The University of Texas at Austin (Stone), Stanford University (Kochenderfer), University of Bremen (Beetz) and Monash University (Burke).

The Centre will also have a strong industrial partner network, including Fourier Intelligence, Honda Research Europe, Shadow Robot, Sony Europe and other organisations who will be engaged in the Centre’s work at all stages, with the expectation that this network grows over time as the Centre’s work grows and begins to have broader impacts.

The central purpose of the job is to carry out foundational research on interactive AI, addressing both methods for characterising human cognitive mechanisms within computational rationality frameworks, and methods for iteratively learning from human interaction to refine models and task specifications in autonomous systems domains. This requires addressing the following areas in novel and innovative ways:

•           Behaviour and cognitive modelling from cross-modal data, ranging from motion capture to natural language dialogue, within computationally rational models 

•           Active inference and reinforcement learning methods for personalisation and iterated model learning 

•           Techniques for weakly supervised learning aimed at leveraging a combination of composable simulation models and real behavioural data

The candidate is expected to take intellectual ownership of core scientific questions in this space, developing new ideas and driving collaborative projects towards significant publications, leveraging the expertise of the supervision team and other scientific collaborators. 

It is also expected that the post holder will contribute to the development of new assets in the form of model libraries and software frameworks. This will form the basis for collaboration with other researchers focussing on developing applications within domain-specific laboratories, and industrial partners aligned with these application areas.

Your skills and attributes for success: (insert up to 5 top criteria)

• A PhD (or near completion) in AI, with a focus on machine learning methods applicable to robotics and autonomous systems 
• An excellent track record of publications in top tier conferences and/or journals in AI, (e.g. IJCAI, AAAI, NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR), robotics (e.g. R:SS, CoRL, ICRA) or computer vision (e.g. CVPR, ICCV)
• Excellent proven experience of developing machine learning systems using state of the art frameworks and tools for handling large datasets
• Ability to work effectively as part of a team, to meet deadlines, and to report on project progress
• Ability to communicate complex information clearly, orally and in writing.

Click to view a copy of the full job description (opens new browser tab)

For informal enquiries, please contact Prof Ramamoorthy- s.ramamoorthy@ed.ac.uk 

Application Information 

Please ensure you include the following documents in your application:

- CV

- Cover letter

As a valued member of our team you can expect:

• A competitive salary
• An exciting, positive, creative, challenging and rewarding place to work. 
• To be part of a diverse and vibrant international community
• Comprehensive Staff Benefits, such as a generous holiday entitlement, competitive pension schemes, staff discounts, and family-friendly initiatives. Check out the full list on our staff benefits page (opens in a new tab) and use our reward calculator to discover the total value of your pay and benefits 

Championing equality, diversity and inclusion

The University of Edinburgh holds a Silver Athena SWAN award in recognition of our commitment to advance gender equality in higher education. We are members of the Race Equality Charter and we are also Stonewall Scotland Diversity Champions, actively promoting LGBT equality. 

Prior to any employment commencing with the University you will be required to evidence your right to work in the UK. Further information is available on our right to work webpages (opens new browser tab)

Key dates to note

The closing date for applications is 10 January 2025.

Unless stated otherwise the closing time for applications is 11:59pm GMT. If you are applying outside the UK the closing time on our adverts automatically adjusts to your browsers local time zone. 

The University is able to sponsor the employment of international workers in this role.  If successful, an international applicant requiring sponsorship to work in the UK will need to satisfy the UK Home Office’s English Language requirements and apply for and secure a Skilled Worker Visa.  

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