We offer a two-year research position for a postdoctoral or predoctoral scientist on the topic of explainable AI in the context of natural language processing of clinical reports at the Department of Computer Science, KU Leuven.. The position is financed by the CHIST-ERA project ANTIDOTE (ArgumeNtaTIon-Driven explainable artificial intelligence fOr digiTal mEdicine). The project focuses on deep learning models for text classification in the medical domain, where the need for high quality explanations of clinical decisions is critical. The project proposes an integrated approach for the understanding of textual medical data and the generation of a textual explanation to justify a medical diagnosis made by a neural network, so that clinicians can judge its validity.

The partners of the ANTIDOTE project provide annotated argumentative structures of natural language explanations of medical decisions (human explanations).

We will also leverage larger-scale data (without annotated explanation) in order to improve explanation generation. One way would be to use feature importance techniques (Integrated gradients, LIME or preferably search-based methods) applied to models trained to perform medical decisions, to guide explanation generation.

KU Leuven is declared the most innovative university in Europe by Reuters four years in a row and is ranked 42th on the Times Higher Education World University Ranking (2022).

Offer

* We offer a research position for 2 years starting September 1 or the latest October 1, 2022.

* We offer a competitive wage and yearly budget to attend conferences.

* We offer the opportunity for personal development beyond research including the supervision of master and PhD students and the possibility to contribute to teaching.

*  Access to our deep learning cluster which contains the latest GPU hardware.

If interested,please apply the latest by August 20h, 2022. Excellent candidates will be invited for an online interview. The position will be closed once a suitable candidate is found. 

Responsibilities

* Perform fundamental research in natural language processing, machine learning and explainable AI resulting in publications in highly-ranked venues.

* Collaborate with the other European partners of the ANTIDOTE project.

* Carry out some (light) teaching duties if interested, which may include lectures, the organization of student seminars, and the supervision of bachelor and master theses.

Profile

* You have (or are near completion of) a master or PhD in Computer Science . 

* Given that we have to fill in the research position very soon, we will only consider applicants who can work at KU Leuven, Belgium without visa.

* You have a demonstrated expertise in machine learning, deep neural networks and natural language processing. Expertise in structured prediction and/or structured generation is a plus.

* You have an outstanding track record of publications in relevant international peer-reviewed A ranked conferences and in journals with high impact factor in the fields of machine learning and natural language processing.

* You are good at collaborating with others.

* You work proactively and independently and have good communication skills.

* You have an excellent knowledge of the English language, both spoken and written as well as of another European language (e.g., French, Spanish or Italian).

* You are highly motivated, ambitious and result-oriented.

For more information please contact Dr Damien Sileo mail: [email protected] or Prof. Dr. Marie-Francine Moens, mail: [email protected]  with [XAI22] in your e-mail subject.