UiT The Arctic University of Norway

UiT The Arctic University of Norway is a multi-campus comprehensive university at the international forefront. Our vision is to be a driving force for developing the High North.

The Northern Sami notion eallju, which means eagerness to work, sets the tone for this motive power at UiT. Along with students, staff and the wider community, we aim to utilise our location in Northern Norway and Sápmi, our broad and diverse research and study portfolio and interdisciplinary advantage to shape the future.

Our social mission is to provide research-based education of high quality, perform artistic development and carry out research of the highest international quality standards in the entire range from basic to applied. We will convey knowledge about disciplines and contribute to innovation. Our social mission unites UiT across various studies, research fields and large geographical distances. This demands good cooperation with trade and industry and civil society as well as with international partners. We will strengthen knowledge-based and sustainable development at a regional, national and international level.

Academic freedom and scientific and ethical principles form the basis for all UiT’s activities. Participation, co-determination, transparency and good processes will provide the decision-making basis we need to make wise and far-sighted priorities. Our students and staff will have the opportunity to develop their abilities and potential. Founded on academic integrity, we will be courageous, committed and generous in close contact with disciplines, people and contemporary developments.

We will demonstrate adaptability and seek good and purposeful utilisation of resources, so we are ready to meet the expectations and opportunities of the future. We will strengthen the quality and impact of our disciplines and core tasks through the following three strategic priority areas.

Faculty of Science and Technology

The position

The Department of Physics and Technology at UiT The Arctic University of Norway in Tromsø has a vacant full-time position as postdoctoral research fellow within Visual Intelligence, a Centre for Research-Based Innovation (SFI) funded by the Research Council of Norway and consortium partners. The position is a fixed term position for a duration of 3 years. 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 can 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.

Visual Intelligence is a research centre at the international forefront of deep learning and image analysis research. The centre is hosted by UiT The Arctic University of Norway with the University of Oslo and the Norwegian Computing Center as research partners and with a consortium of industry and public sector partners. Visual Intelligence’s research fuels innovations relevant to the consortium partners and beyond.

The workplace is at UiT in Tromsø within the UiT Machine Learning Group. The successful applicant must be able to start in the position within 6 months after receiving the offer.

Your profile and field of work

You are keen on shaping the healthcare of the future by researching novel deep learning methodology with potential to improve diagnosis and decision support by turning patient data from medical images and associated medical data sources into actionable information. You get inspired by generic research in deep learning to lay a foundation for innovations within the healthcare sector and potentially beyond. Deep learning for image analysis is the key, and to make progress in this endeavor means that you will take a major part in realizing the impact of AI for the wellbeing of people locally, nationally, and in a global health perspective towards the UN sustainability goals.

Your interests are in neural networks research, and you have documented research experience in this area in the form of publications. You have a big motivation to contribute to the next leaps in mathematical modelling of neural networks and you are highly motivated to work interdisciplinary. 

Deep learning for medical data imposes entirely new challenges. You will help solve challenges related to limited medical data. For instance, how to learn from limited labels, how to exploit weak labels, or how to exploit intrinsic signals in data. Incorporation of prior information in the deep learning process may be relevant, e.g. to respect anatomical constraints or to exploit physical properties of medical data. Other challenges may be to exploit additional modalities of medical data (e.g. image plus clinical text), all with the aim to move away from traditional supervised learning. Topics of interest to develop further include for instance image segmentation, classification and landmark detection by contributing to new developments in e.g. few-shot learning, self-supervised learning, semi-supervised learning, anomaly detection and out-of-sample learning, as well as within uncertainty quantification in deep learning and novel interpretability methods.

The position’s field of research is by nature interdisciplinary and will be performed in collaboration with national and international partners. Foreseen collaborators will be the health-related partners within Visual Intelligence, for instance the University Hospital of North Norway and the Cancer Registry of Norway.

A core element of Visual Intelligence is transferability of ideas and solutions across applications and consortium partners you are expected to collaborate with other Visual Intelligence researchers in generic deep learning image analysis research and to collaborate with researchers focusing on other applications of importance to Visual Intelligence.

As a postdoctoral researcher, you are expected to be involved in all aspects of the research, including study design, planning, conducting research, data analyses, and publishing results., and progress and results are expected to be published in peer-reviewed scientific journals and presented at national and international conferences/workshops. You will take an active role and regularly interact with other members of Visual Intelligence participate in supervision of PhD and MSc students.

Your qualifications

You must hold a Norwegian doctoral degree (PhD) or a corresponding foreign doctoral degree recognized as equivalent to a Norwegian doctoral degree, in machine learning or related disciplines such as computer science, physics, mathematics, statistics.

Qualification with a PhD is required before commencement in the position. If you’re 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 start-up date of the position.

You must document scientific publications at a high level that include:

• Development of new deep learning methodology
• Applications within the medical domain

We expect publications in core machine learning venues and in venues at the intersection of machine learning and medical image analysis, where examples could include e.g. Medical Image Analysis, IEEE ISBI, etc.

You must also document:

• English proficiency as stated here.
• Experience with research on medical data such as e.g. MR images, PET images, ultrasound images, mammography images, etc.
• Significant coursework in machine learning, pattern recognition, statistics, deep learning, and you have programming skills.
• That you master software tools such as PyTorch and to be able to document this and to be used to GPU-based coding.

Since supervision of students will be part of the position, any experience with student supervision will be beneficial.

Even though teaching is not a part of the position, any teaching experiences will viewed as positive qualifications since dissemination of research in the form of presentations, popular science and outreach activities, are part of all scientific positions.

Track record of publication in international, peer-reviewed scientific journals is beneficial.

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

We are looking for candidates with:

• Independence, creativity, and engagement.
• Strong problem-solving skills.
• Excellent communication skills.
• Excellent work ethics.
• Good skills in handling, analyzing, and visualizing data.

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. The committee's mandate is to undertake an assessment of the applicants' qualifications based on the written material presented by the applicants, and the detailed description draw up for the position.

The applicants who are assessed as best qualified will be called to an interview. The interview should among other things, aim to clarify the applicant’s motivation and personal suitability for the position. A trial lecture may also be held.

Contact

The contact person for this postdoctoral fellowship is Professor and Director of Visual Intelligence Robert Jenssen. Further information about the position is available by:

• phone: +47 416 99 612
• email: robert.jenssen@uit.no

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

• A cross-disciplinary, interactive and stimulating working environment.
• National and international mobility to work closely with the research partners and to present the work in conferences/workshops.
• Opportunity to develop academic components of the career, i.e., working closely with graduate and undergraduate students.
• Guidance and support to identify and apply for relevant research grants.
• Flexible working hours and a state collective pay agreement.
• Pension scheme through the state pension fund .
• A unique hometown, Tromsø, combining a multicultural urban scene with nearby Arctic wilderness.

Norwegian health policy aims to ensure that everyone, irrespective of their personal finances and where they live, have access to good health and care services of equal standard. As an employee you will become member of the National Insurance Scheme which also include health care services.

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

Application

Your application must include:

• Application letter explaining your motivation, research interests, and experience relevant for conducting the work within the vacant position (max. 1 A4 page).
• A brief project proposal identifying outstanding research questions within the topics of the position, and a research plan for how to answer them (max. 2 A4 pages).
• CV (containing a complete overview of education and professional work; max. 3 pages).
• Diplomas and transcripts (all degrees).
• Documentation of English proficiency
• Letters from 2-3 references including their contact information.
• Documentation of teaching experience and qualifications, if applicable
• A list of your academic production.
• The academic works (published or not) you wish us to take into consideration in the assessment.
• If you’re at the final stages of your PhD, you must submit your PhD thesis with the application. 

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. You will become a member of the Norwegian Public Service Pension Fund, which gives you many benefits in addition to a lifelong pension: You may be entitled to financial support if you become ill or disabled, your family may be entitled to financial support when you die, you become insured against occupational injury or occupational disease, and you can get good terms on a mortgage. Read more about your employee benefits at: spk.no.

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. 

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