LEDIG STILLING VED UIT NORGES ARKTISKE UNIVERSITET
Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Machine Learning
Deadline: 23.01.2022
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.
The UiT campus is located near the centre of Tromsø, a vibrant city located in Northern Norway with approximately 75 000 inhabitants. The UiT is the northernmost university in the world, situated in the scenic landscape of North Scandinavia. The location offers many opportunities for e.g., sighting aurora, hiking and skiing.
Faculty of Science and Technology
The position
UiT The Arctic University of Norway, Faculty of Science and Technology, has a Postdoctoral Research Fellow position vacant. The position is attached to the UiT Machine Learning Group at the Department of Physics and Technology.
The appointment is for a fixed term of three years. In general, a main objective of an appointment as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow is to qualify for work in a senior academic position. No one may be appointed to more than one fixed term period as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the same institution.
If you receive 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).
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 affiliation
The postdoctoral research fellow will be integrated in a dynamic team of ML researchers: the Machine Learning Group of UiT. This group is part of the Department of Physics and Technology. The postdoctoral research fellow will have a close connection to the Department of Pharmacy with regular contact with the Natural Products and Medicinal Chemistry Research Group.
Inside the ML group, the researcher will benefit from contacts and exchanges with a variety of experts covering many of the cutting-edge directions in machine learning and to a dedicated team focused on ML in healthcare. Moreover, the group has access to a 20+ GPU cluster for exploring the possibilities of deep learning models. The ML group benefit from many connections with UNN the University Hospital in Tromsø, 10 min walk away from the office, with a privileged access to health data and clinicians.
The position’s field of research and role of the research fellow
We are looking for a highly motivated researcher with a specialty in machine learning, willing to push the boundaries of machine learning applied to biochemistry.
The goal of the project is to design and apply innovative ML methods for the identification and analysis of chemical components from mass spectrometer measurements (liquid chromatography - high resolution mass spectrometer). It is focused on revealing the small organic molecules (metabolome) playing a key role as markers of disease and health in the human body. Progress in this direction can potentially have a high impact on patient diagnosis and on the understanding disease mechanisms on a molecular level.
Over the years, the Natural Products and Medicinal Chemistry Research Group has collected a large amount of metabolome data. The project will rely on a metabolome database for data analysis and machine learning built from human serum metabolome datasets enriched by newly collected data. In addition, health related information has been recorded along the metabolome data for each sample and opens the door to finding new relationships between health and metabolome perturbations.
The researcher will design new ML methods to identify from the measurements the components present in samples and their molecular structure. The task is highly challenging as each sample is made of millions of values and contains many molecules with a wide range of concentration. Obtaining better detection accuracy is not the only motivation of the project.
Several important additional goals have been identified:
creating new explainable ML models able to assess the uncertainty of the results and inform about their limitations. This is crucial for clinicians to trust the system.
incorporating contextual information from health records. The access to additional information about the sample via health-records can be highly valuable for helping the prediction. The pairing metabolome - health records could also lead to better diagnoses. Original approaches have to be designed for combining data of different nature in a multi-modal data framework. It could include a graph structure (e.g., a knowledge graph) or other approaches adding information about the relationship between the data and structuring it.
The postdoctoral research fellow will be a part of the UiT Machine Learning Group, and will engage in collaborative research with the other members of the group. The fellow will be exposed to, and expected to contribute to, proposal writing, organization of scientific seminars, and to co-supervision of master students.
Contact
Further information about the position and project details is available by contacting:
The candidate should have a strong background in machine learning and experience with coding in Python and training deep learning models. A genuine interest for real-world applications and the ability to interact with practitioners from the application side is mandatory.
Experience working with mass spectrometer data would be a plus, as well as knowledge of chemistry and/or biology. Experience with open-source projects is also valuable.
For appointment as Postdoctoral Research Fellow, the applicant is required to have a Norwegian doctoral degree in the subject area concerned or a corresponding foreign doctoral degree recognised as equivalent to a Norwegian doctoral degree. Doctoral candidates who hand in their PhD thesis by 01.03.2022 are eligible for this position. You must submit the (draft) thesis with your application. You must have dissertated before starting in the position.
The main purpose of postdoctoral research fellowships is to qualify researchers for work in top academic positions within their discipline and this requires a strong commitment from the candidate. The candidate should be motivated for scientific work and have excellent analytical and collaborative features. A good command of English and excellent communication skills are required. Emphasis is attached to personal suitability.
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
An expert committee will assess the applicants. 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 drawn up for the position.
The applicants who are 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 and motivation for the position. A trial lecture may also be held.
UiT wishes to increase the proportion of women in academic positions. In cases where two or more applicants are found to be approximately equally qualified, women will be given priority.
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.
Application
Your application must include:
1-2 page letter of application (cover letter) highlighting the candidate’s background and its relevance to the announced job
CV (containing a complete overview of education, supervised professional training and professional work)
Diplomas and transcripts (all degrees)
Name and contact details of 2-3 references (name, affiliation to the applicant, email address and phone number)
A list of your academic production
Description of your academic production, stating which works you consider most important
Academic works, up to ten. The doctoral thesis is regarded as one work.
The works (published or unpublished) which the applicant wishes to be taken into consideration during the assessment process must be submitted. The applicant may submit up to 10 works that are central to his/her production. The applicant’s doctoral thesis is regarded in this context as one work.
In addition, the applicant shall provide a description of his/her scientific production stating which works he/she considers the most important and shall therefore be the main emphasis of the assessment. A brief description of the other listed works shall also be included to demonstrate depth of production. These descriptions shall be an attachment to 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.The starting salary is approximately 553 kNOK per year. The university also provides assistance with housing for new employees.
The successful candidate must be willing to get involved in the ongoing development of their department and the university as a whole.
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.
