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PhD Research Fellow in Multimodal Networked Interaction

Deadline: 28.02.2023

Universitetet i Oslo

The University of Oslo is Norway’s oldest and highest rated institution of research and education with 28 000 students and 7000 employees. Its broad range of academic disciplines and internationally esteemed research communities make UiO an important contributor to society.


The Department of Informatics (IFI) is one of nine departments belonging to the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences. IFI is Norway’s largest university department for general education and research in Computer Science and related topics.


The Department has more than 1800 students on bachelor level, 600 master students, and over 240 PhDs and postdocs. The overall staff of the Department is close to 370 employees, about 280 of these in full time positions. The full time tenured academic staff is 75, mostly Full/Associate Professors.

Job description

Position as PhD Research Fellow in the multimodal networked interaction available at Networks and Distributed Systems, Department of Informatics, University of Oslo.

No one can be appointed for more than one PhD Research Fellowship period at the University of Oslo. Starting date no later than October 1, 2023.

The fellowship period is three (3) years. A fourth year may be considered with a workload of 25 % that may consist of teaching, supervision duties, and/or research assistance. This is dependent upon the qualification of the applicant and the current needs of the department.

More about the position

The Sustainable Immersive Networking Lab (SINLAB) is seeking a new member for its multi-disciplinary team that holistically explores remote human action over current and future networks.

Rather than following the general trend in research and industry, where AIs are trained to replace people, SINLAB explores human-centric, inclusive processes, where the challenges of remote interaction are tackled by understanding human action and perception. In essence, we don’t want people to just get a job done, we want to enable them to truly experience remote presence with all their senses, eventually leading to natural social interaction across distances.

SINLAB conducts systems research to augment the capabilities of users by enabling them to act in remote physical spaces in a natural manner and to experience the effects of remote actions. The research is conducted for application areas, including health, education, sports, entertainment and creative applications. The team explores resource management in networks and distributed systems, handling audiovisual and haptic modalities from capture to playout, context-specific action prediction, real-time interaction among humans and between humans and a remote environment, and quality of experience.

The applicant taking the open position will contribute to this by applying natural human hand and arm motion in a remote location through a robot arm and delivering audio-visual as well as haptic feedback to the user. Specifically, the applicant will explore people’s experience when they are virtually present in a remote space, can interact with objects and people through a robot arm, and receive touch feedback from the robot’s hand. To overcome the latency that is unavoidably present in such a system, the candidate will work with the team to explore both short-term action prediction and touch-feedback prediction.

The applicant’s central research question will be how latency and accuracy affect the quality of a user’s experience (QoE), and to which extent prediction can enhance this experience. Addressing this research question will be part of the team’s search for non-intrusive methods for continuous QoE measurement.

The applicant will have the opportunity to collaborate with academic and industrial researchers in Europe through ongoing national and international projects, and through our association with centers of excellence in Norway and abroad.

The position's subject area may require licensing under the Norwegian Export Control Act. In order to be considered for the position, it is a prerequisite that UiO must be able to be granted such licence.

Qualification requirements

The Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences has a strategic ambition to be among Europe’s leading communities for research, education and innovation. Candidates for this fellowship will be selected in accordance with this, and expected to be in the upper segment of their class with respect to academic credentials.

In particular, applicants must:

  • Master’s degree or equivalent in informatics, computer engineering, cybernetics or a closely related field
  • A foreign completed degree (M.Sc.-level) must correspond to a minimum of four years in the Norwegian educational system
  • The applicant must have documented experience in an area computer-mediated interaction or HCI
  • The applicant must document knowledge about the system performance evaluation of computer systems and networks for interactive applications, preferably AR/VR/XR, multimodal or multimedia systems. Directly relevant areas are preferable
  • The applicant must have programming experience. It is an advantage if the applicant has developed working systems, prototypes or emulators. It is an advantage if the applicant has developed software in fields such as AR/VR/XR, robotics, haptics, multimodal devices, multimedia systems or computer games requiring hand-eye-coordination
  • It is an advantage to have experience in machine learning, in particular concerning action prediction

Candidates without a Master’s degree have until 30 June, 2023 to complete the final exam.

Grade requirements:

The norm is as follows:

  • the average grade point for courses included in the Bachelor’s degree must be C or better in the Norwegian educational system
  • the average grade point for courses included in the Master’s degree must be B or better in the Norwegian educational system
  • the Master’s thesis must have the grade B or better in the Norwegian educational system
  • Fluent oral and written communication skills in English
  • English requirements for applicants from outside of EU/ EEA countries and exemptions from the requirements

The purpose of the fellowship is research training leading to the successful completion of a PhD degree.

The fellowship requires admission to the PhD programme at the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences. The application to the PhD programme must be submitted to the department no later than two months after taking up the position. For more information see:

Personal skills

  • The applicant must be comfortable and capable working in an open, interactive, collaborative work environment
  • The applicant must demonstrate the social responsibility and ethical awareness required to design, organize and conduct user studies

We offer

  • Salary NOK 501 200 – 544 400 per year depending on qualifications and seniority as PhD Research Fellow (position code 1017)
  • Attractive welfare benefits and a generous pension agreement
  • Vibrant international academic environment
  • Career development programmes
  • Oslo’s family-friendly surroundings with their rich opportunities for culture and outdoor activities

How to apply

The application must include:

  • Cover letter - statement of motivation and research interests
  • CV (summarizing education, positions and academic work - scientific publications)
  • Copies of the original Bachelor and Master’s degree diploma, transcripts of records
  • The master thesis
  • Documentation of English proficiency
  • List of publications and academic work that the applicant wishes to be considered by the evaluation committee (if applicable)
  • Names and contact details of 2-3 references (name, relation to candidate, e-mail and telephone number)

The application with attachments must be delivered in our electronic recruiting system (please follow the link “Apply for this job”). Foreign applicants are advised to attach an explanation of their University's grading system. Please note that all documents should be in English or a Scandinavian language.

Applicants will be called in for an interview.

Formal regulations

Please see the guidelines and regulations for appointments to Research Fellowships at the University of Oslo.

No one can be appointed for more than one PhD Research Fellowship period at the University of Oslo.

According to the Norwegian Freedom of 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.

The University of Oslo has an agreement for all employees, aiming to secure rights to research results etc.

Inclusion and diversity are a strength. The University of Oslo has a personnel policy objective of achieving a balanced gender composition. Furthermore, we want employees with diverse professional expertise, life experience and perspectives.

If there are qualified applicants with disabilities, employment gaps or immigrant background, we will invite at least one applicant from each of these categories to an interview.

Contact information

For further information please contact:

  • Carsten Griwodz, phone: +47 228 52403, e-mail: griff@uio.no

For questions regarding Jobbnorge, please contact HR Adviser Therese Ringvold, e-mail: therese.ringvold@mn.uio.no.

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