A wave of new positions at NorwAI next year 

NorwAI is hiring. In 2025 the research center and its partners will announce seven new positions open for research fellows. 

The positions for next year are five PhD positions and two postdoctorial fellows. In addition, NorwAI is this autumn currently hiring three PhDs and one post. doc. where candidates already have applied and interviews are in progress. 

Five of the 2025 positions are at the Department of computer science NTNU in Trondheim, one at Department of Information Security and Communication Technology, NTNU Gjøvik and one at the University of Stavanger. These announcements underline NorwAI’s position as an important provider of the next generation AI heads for Norway.  

The positions will be announced on our LinkedIn account and posted at our Career section on our web page as soon as the positions are published and open or applications. The PhD candidate positions for 2025 are the following: 

• PhD candidate for work package DATA (Data platforms and streaming data). Supervisor will be Associate Professor Benjamin Kille, Trondheim. 

The purpose of the DATA work package is twofold: 1) to develop modern AI for streaming and sensor-based data analysis and 2) to develop techniques and tools for the automatic creation and management of knowledge graphs.  

• PhD candidate for work package SOC (AI in Society). Supervisor will be professor Eric Monterio, Trondheim.

The SOC work package examines societal aspects of artificial intelligence technologies as they are developed, debated, and implemented. We focus on selected empirical cases, including  

• Values in language models 
• Societal aspects of voice and speech recognition technologies 
• Standardization of AI technologies and ethical, legal and social aspects. 

• PhD candidate for work package LAP (Language and Personalization). Supervisor will be professor Krisztian Balog at the University of Stavanger. 
• PhD candidate for work package LAP – Language and Personalization. Supervisor will be professor Jon Atle Gulla at NTNU in Trondheim. 

The purpose for the LAP work package is to develop personalization techniques and Scandinavian language processing capabilities to provide personalized content generation and:

1.    Develop truly explainable, fair and transparent personalization techniques
2.    Enable proactivity in customer relations
3.    Provide an individualized experience that provably respects privacy concerns
4.    Develop individualized content
5.    Develop large-scale Scandinavian language models
6.    Enable human-like content creation and conversations

• PhD candidate for work package TRUST (Trustworthy AI). Supervisor will be professor Staal Vinterbo at the Department of Information Security and Communication Technology, NTNU Gjøvik. 

    The purpose of the TRUST work package is to reinforce a common understanding of safe and responsible AI, specifically:

1.    Establish trust in safe and responsible AI
2.    Ensure privacy-preserving in AI technologies
3.    Create guidelines for sustainable and beneficial use of AI
4.    Develop principles for explainable and transparent AI
5.    Develop principles for independent assurance of AI deployment

Also there will be two new postdoc positions  announced for 2025. One for work package DATA and the other for work package SOC.  

In addition to research fellows, NorwAI has an overall plan for educating up to 500 master's students. 

-    We are well underway towards both goals. At the end of 2023 we have had 125 master's students graduating with thesis with topics within the senter objectives, says senior advisor Karolina Storesund who is NorwAI’s administrative coordinator. 

She says NorwAI aim to recruit more than 20 and up to 40 research fellows including both the center's own funding and additional funding resulting from the center activities. The research center is financed until 2028, and since the start in October 2020 until this year we have hired five postdocs with the support of the center budget and from other sources, says Karolina Storesund. 

-    The number of PhD positions is massive. We have hired 13 PhDs with the financial support from the center budget. Also there are currently 12 PhDs candidates working on projects in the center with financial support from other sources. Typically, the main group of PhD candidates and postdoc fellows are in Trondheim, but also a fair amount are positioned at the University of Oslo and the University of Stavanger, says Karolina Storesund. 

Administrative Coordinator Karolina Storesund, NorwAI. 

2024-10-29

By Rolf D. Svendsen