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 committed to undertake highly challenging high impact research at the nexus of topologies (or graph theory) and artificial intelligence.

The position is allocated to the Research Council of Norway funded project: Nanoscale artificial intelligence in microscopy and nanoscopy for life sciences (NanoAI).

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 NanoAI. 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 project is a part of the Bio-AI activity at the Department of Computer Science. This core aim of this activity is the develop new scalable and interpretable artificial intelligence solutions to accomplish knowledge discovery from biological and biophysical signals from a wide variety of sensors, spanning the most modern living system friendly microscopes to the now ubiquitous wearable IoT health and fitness devices. The activity setup in 2019 is fast expanding, now having 5 PhD students, 2 master students, and several vacant PhD and Postdoc positions.

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

NanoAI is an Enabling Technology project funded by Research Council of Norway for a duration of 2021-2025. The project is led by principal investigator (PI) Dilip K. Prasad and supported by 3 other co-PIs, two from microscopy domain and one from cardiovascular cell biology. More information about the project can be found on the project website.

The position being announced here relates to developing topological architectures for microscopic and nanoscopic structures at sub-cellular scales that are amenable to machine learning and evolvable intelligence. Mathematical concepts of graph theory, scalable dynamically evolving graphs, operator theory (or functional analysis), optimization theory, etc. will be used to accomplish the task. The position also involves transfer of knowledge and training relevant team members about the new developments. It may also involve the candidate to undertake some preliminary training on multiple disciplines for sufficient knowhow.

The position will involve scientific development as described above, writing scientific articles for multidisciplinary publication avenues for dissemination of the work, collaborating with microscopists, biologists, and artificial intelligence scientists, participation in dataset and code releases, and performing popular science communication.

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 topology (or graph theory), operator theory (or functional analysis), and/or optimization theory. 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 either developing topological/graph models for image-like data or processing graphs for artificial intelligence, preferably both. Exposure to microscopy data (image/video) processing is highly desirable. Candidate should have a publication and open source code profile related to the topics mentioned above. Experience of publishing scientific works related to topology/topological intelligence is preferred. Experience of supervising students at bachelor, master, or PhD level is a plus.

The other mandatory requirements are:

• Experience of working with topologies, graphs, polynomial, optimization, and artificial intelligence 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, C/C++, MATLAB, OpenCV, etc.
• A successful candidate should have a strong interest in at least one of the following topics: topological intelligence, fundamental machine learning and artificial intelligence, scalable learning, and interpretable learning.

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).

Assessment

The applicants will be assessed by an expert committee. During this assessment process, emphasis will be attached to the applicant’s potential for research as shown by:

• Publications
• Doctoral thesis or equivalent
• Open source code profile (github, paperswithcode.com, etc.)
• Any other academic works
• A small image-based graph analysis task
• Performance in the interview

In addition, consideration may be given to work experience and to teaching qualifications.

The applicants assessed as the best qualified will be called to an interview. The interview shall among other things aim to clarify the applicant’s personal suitability for the position.

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 a multidisciplinary team closely, and potentially travel to the participant sites for research collaborations. The candidate will have worked on a prestigious Research Council of Norway project which provides vast opportunities in the future employment all across Europe.

If you recieve a personal overseas research grant from NFR it is possible to apply NFR for an extension of the fellowship period corresponding to the length of the stay abroad (minimum three months, maximum 12 months).

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. Two 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.

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