UiT The Arctic University of Norway

UiT is a multi-campus research university in Norway and the northernmost university of the world. Our central location in the High North, our broad and diverse research and study portfolio, and our interdisciplinary qualities make us uniquely suited to meet the challenges of the future. At UiT you can explore global issues from a close-up perspective.

Credibility, academic freedom, closeness, creativity and commitment shall be hallmarks of the relationship between our employees, between our employees and our students and between UiT and our partners.

Faculty of Science and Technology

The position

A PhD position in Computer Science is available at the Department of Computer Science affiliated with the Health Data Lab research group and The Norwegian Centre for Clinical Artificial Intelligence.

The Department of Computer Science provides an active international research environment with 22 tenured faculty members, 11 adjunct professors, 5 post doctors and researchers, 7 technical/ administrative staff members and about 30 PhD students. The goal of the Department is to advance the research and teaching of computer science as a discipline, to demonstrate leadership within our areas of interest, and to contribute to society through our education, research and dissemination.

The Health Data Lab’s research focus is threefold. First; build and experimentally evaluate infrastructure systems for bioinformatics and machine learning analyses. Second; apply bioinformatics, statistics, and machine learning methods for novel health data analyses. Third; build and evaluate data exploration and interpretation tools. All our research is interdisciplinary. We therefore combine experimental computer science with real problems, applications, and data obtained from our biomedical research collaborators.

The Norwegian Centre for Clinical Artificial Intelligence facilitates the development and use of clinical decision support tools based on artificial intelligence by connecting clinical expertise with researchers on machine learning and technology. One of the research areas is in computational pathology where the goal is to improve cancer prognosis using machine learning to extract clinically significant information from whole-slide images to increase diagnostic precision

The position is for a period of four years. The nominal length of the PhD programme is three years. The fourth year is distributed as 25 % each year and will consist of teaching and other duties. The objective of the position is to complete research training to the level of a doctoral degree. Admission to the PhD programme is a prerequisite for employment, and the programme period starts on commencement of the position.

The workplace is at UiT in Tromsø. You must be able to start in the position in Tromsø within a reasonable time after receiving the offer.

The position’s field of research

The main aim of the project is to build and evaluate a modular framework for computational pathology that enables efficient development, validation, and deployment of novel machine learning analyses of pathology images. The focus is on achieving interactive performance for inference on the very large images used in digital pathology, and programmatic labelling to meet the challenge of limited labels available for our data.

The research area for the PhD position is therefore systems support for machine learning, and the methodology will be experimental computer science. The project will be done in close collaboration with machine learning model developers and clinicians working in closely related projects on computational pathology and other projects on machine learning on complex images in the SPKI centre.

Contact

For further information about the position, contact:

• Professor Lars Ailo Bongo, phone: +47 77644121, email: lars.ailo.bongo@uit.no

For administrative questions, please contact Head of Administration Svein Tore Jensen, phone +47 77644036, email: svein.tore.jensen@uit.no.

Qualifications

This position requires a Master’s degree or equivalent in Computer Science. A successful candidate can document an interest and expertise in experimental computer science and especially systems development. Previous interdisciplinary research collaboration experience is considered advantageous. We will emphasize the quality and relevance of the candidate’s track record rather than volume. Since our research results are evaluated experimentally, good practical development and operations skills are necessary.

Applicants must document fluency of in English and be able to work in an international environment. Working knowledge of Norwegian or a Scandinavian language is considered beneficial.

During the assessment, emphasis will be put on the applicant’s potential for research in the described field, motivation for the position as described in the cover letter, and personal suitability for the position.

As many as possible should have the opportunity to undertake organized research training. If you already hold a PhD or have equivalent competence, we will not appoint you to this position.

Admission to the PhD programme

For employment in the PhD position, you must be qualified for admission to the PhD programme at the Faculty of Science and Technology and participate in organized doctoral studies within the employment period.

Admission normally requires:

• A bachelor's degree of 180 ECTS and a master's degree of 120 ECTS, or an integrated master's degree of 300 ECTS.
• A master's thesis with a scope corresponding to at least 30 ECTS for a master's degree of 120 ECTS.
• A master's thesis with a scope corresponding to at least 20 ECTS for an integrated master's degree of 300 ECTS.

In order to gain admission to the programme, the applicant must have a grade point average of C or better for the master’s degree and for relevant subjects of the bachelor’s degree. A more detailed description of admission requirements can be found here.

Applicants with a foreign education will be subjected to an evaluation of whether the educational background is equal to Norwegian higher education, following national guidelines from NOKUT.

If you are employed in the position, you will be provisionally admitted to the PhD programme. Application for final admission must be submitted no later than two months after taking up the position.

Inclusion and diversity

UiT The Arctic University of Norway is working actively to promote equality, gender balance and diversity among employees and students, and to create an inclusive and safe working environment. We believe that inclusion and diversity is a strength and we want employees with different competencies, professional experience, life experience and perspectives.

If you have a disability, a gap in your CV or immigrant background, we encourage you to tick the box for this in your application. If there are qualified applicants, we invite at least one in each group for an interview. If you get the job, we will adapt the working conditions if you need it. Apart from selecting the right candidates, we will only use the information for anonymous statistics.

We offer

• Involvement in an interesting research project
• A good academic environment with dedicated colleagues 
• Flexible working hours and a state collective pay agreement 
• Pension scheme through the state pension fund 
• More practical information for working and living in Norway can be found here.

Application 

Your application must include:

• Cover letter explaining your motivation and research interests
• CV
• Diploma for bachelor's and master's degree
• Transcript of grades/academic record for bachelor's and master's degree
• Explanation of the grading system for foreign education (Diploma Supplement if available)
• Documentation of English proficiency
• References with contact information
• Master’s thesis, and any other academic works

Qualification with a master’s degree is required before commencement in the position. If you are near completion of your master’s degree, you may still apply and submit a draft version of the thesis and a statement from your supervisor or institution indicating when the degree will be obtained. You must document completion of your degree before commencement in the position. You must still submit your transcripts for the master’s degree with your application.

All documentation to be considered must be in a Scandinavian language or English. Diplomas and transcripts must also be submitted in the original language, if not in English or Scandinavian. We only accept applications and documentation sent via Jobbnorge within the application deadline.

General information

The appointment is made in accordance with State regulations and guidelines at UiT. At our website, you will find more information for applicants.

A shorter period of appointment may be decided when the PhD Fellow has already completed parts of their research training programme or when the appointment is based on a previous qualifying position PhD Fellow, research assistant, or the like in such a way that the total time used for research training amounts to three years.

Remuneration for the position of PhD Fellow is in accordance with the State salary scale code 1017. A compulsory contribution of 2 % to the Norwegian Public Service Pension Fund will be deducted.

We process personal data given in an application or CV in accordance with the Personal Data Act (Offentleglova). According to the Personal Data Act information about the applicant may be included in the public applicant list, also in cases where the applicant has requested non-disclosure. You will receive advance notification in the event of such publication, if you have requested non-disclosure.

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