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

UiT The Arctic University of Norway has one vacant Postdoctoral Research Fellow position in the Bio-AI Lab of Department of Computer Science for a candidate with a PhD degree in machine learning, computer vision or related topic.

The position is allocated to the EU’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Action (RIA) Future and Emerging Technologies (FET-Open) project: OrganVision: Technology for real-time visualizing and modelling of fundamental process in living organoids towards new insights into organ-specific health, disease, and recovery.

The appointment is for a period of three years for a candidate equipped with knowledge, skills and the will to contribute to a high impact, high-risk and high gain project such as OrganVision.

Appointment to the position of Postdoctoral Research Fellow is mainly intended to provide qualification for work in top academic positions. It is a prerequisite that the applicant is able to carry out the project over the full course of the employment period. No person may hold more than one fixed-term position as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the same institution.

The Department of Computer Science provides an active international research environment with 26 tenured faculty members, 11 adjunct professors, 5 post doctors and researchers, 7 technical/ administrative staff members and over 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 workplace is at UiT in Tromsø. You must be able to start in the position within a reasonable time after receiving the offer.

The position's field of research

OrganVision is a Horizon 2020 FET-Open RIA project funded by EU for a duration of 2021-2025. Seven international partners participate in this project, among which UiT leads and coordinates it. More information about the project and participants can be found on the project website as well as the EU project repository.

The position being announced here relates to developing machine learning models, including interpretable and scalable artificial intelligence, for 3D microscopy (labeled and label-free) image and video data of biological samples such as engineered heart tissues and performing AI-based modeling of life processes occurring inside cells and tissues. Interpreting life processes and label-free images/videos of cells and tissues is a daunting task. Several sub-cellular and cellular entities interact with each other on local scale (inside a cell and in its immediate vicinity) and global scale (across the entire tissue and affecting tissue function as a whole). Piecing together the interactions, correlations, and spatio-temporal flow of events is the central task for which new scalable and interpretable artificial intelligence approaches have to be developed by the candidate.

Related research papers:

• A.A. Sekh, I-S. Opstad, A.B. Birgisdottir, T. Myrmel, B.S. Ahluwalia, K. Agarwal, and D. K. Prasad, “Learning nanoscale motion patterns of vesicles in living cells,” IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR), Washington, USA, 14-19 June, 2020.
• A.A. Sekh, I-S. Opstad, G. Godtliebsen, A.B. Birgisdottir, B.S. Ahluwalia, K. Agarwal, and D. K. Prasad, “Physics based machine learning for sub-cellular segmentation in living cells,” Nature Machine Intelligence, 2021.

Contact

Further information about the position is available by contacting Associate Professor Dilip K. Prasad: dilip.prasad@uit.no.

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

Qualifications

This position requires a PhD degree or equivalent in Computer Science, Mathematics, Computing, or Engineering in topics related to artificial intelligence. If you are at the final stages of your PhD, you may still apply if you have submitted your PhD thesis for doctoral degree evaluation within the application deadline*. You must submit the thesis with your application. You must have dissertated before the commencement date of the position.

The candidate must have had experience with developing either scalable or interpretable artificial intelligence and working with modern deep learning architecture. Exposure to microscopy data (image/video) processing is highly desirable. Candidate should have a publication and open source code profile related to these topics. Experience of publishing works related to artificial intelligence in top computer science publication avenues or top microscopy avenues is preferred. Experience of supervising students at bachelor, master, or PhD level is a plus.

The other mandatory requirements are:

• Experience of working with computer vision and deep learning toolkits on at least one of the following platforms – Python, C/C++, MATLAB, Keras, PyTorch, Tensor Flow
• Demonstration of programming proficiency in at least 2 of the following platforms: Python, MATLAB, OpenCV, Keras/PyTorch/Tensor Flow,etc.
• A successful candidate should have a strong interest in at least one of the following topics: fundamental machine learning, neural network architecture, artificial intelligence, scalable learning, and interpretable learning, Artificial Intelligence for Biological field such as organoids/thick tissue/live cell study.

Documented fluency in English is required, and working knowledge of Norwegian or a Scandinavian language is desirable.

During the assessment emphasis will be put on the candidates motivation, potential for research, and personal suitability for the position.

At UiT we put emphasis on the quality, relevance and significance of the research work and not on where the work is published, in accordance with the principles of The San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA).

Inclusion and diversity

UiT The Arctic University i 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 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

The candidate will have a unique opportunity to work in an international team closely, and potentially travel to the participant sites for research collaborations. The candidate will have worked on a prestigious EU project which provides vast opportunities in the future employment all across Europe. The international consortium comprising of academic, research, and medical institutions as well as small and medium enterprises expose the candidate to different career development options after the position.

Application

Your application must include:

• Letter of application
• Personal vision on your career development and your thoughts on how your work at UiT will help you reach your goals (max. 2 pages)
• CV (containing a complete overview of education, supervised professional training and professional work)
• Copies of:
  • Diplomas and transcripts (all degrees including PhD degree*)
  • PhD thesis
  • Academic works, up to ten. The doctoral thesis is regarded as one work.
• List of publication, open source codes, other academic and research output with description of personal contribution
• Two research works that the candidate considers his/her best output or most suited for this position, including comment on why the candidate thinks so.
• The works (published or unpublished) which the applicant wishes to be taken into consideration during the assessment process must be submitted in the web portal.
• Contact information to 3 references, including the PhD supervisor

All documentation to be considered must be in a Scandinavian language or English. 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.

The remuneration for Postdoctoral research fellow is in accordance with the State salary scale code 1352. A compulsory contribution of 2 % to the Norwegian Public Service Pension Fund will be deducted.The successful candidate must be willing to get involved in the ongoing development of their department and the university as a whole.

UiT wishes to increase the proportion of females in academic positions. In cases where two or more applicants are found to be approximately equally qualified, female applicants will be given priority.

According to the Norwegian Freedom and Information Act (Offentleglova) information about the applicant may be included in the public applicant list, also in cases where the applicant has requested non-disclosure.

More practical information for working and living in Norway can be found here.

Apply for position