Postdoctoral Research Associate in Human-Centred AI

This project is part of the UKRI Trustworthy Autonomous Systems (TAS) programme, funded through the UKRI Strategic Priorities Fund and delivered by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC). The TAS programme brings together research communities and key stakeholders to drive forward cross-disciplinary, fundamental research to ensure that autonomous systems are safe, reliable, resilient, ethical, and trusted. 

This post is specifically associated with the UKRI Research Node on TAS Governance and Regulation – Better Governance by Design – led by Prof Subramanian Ramamoorthy from the School of Informatics, University of Edinburgh (UoE), in which Dr Hana Chockler is leading the direction of qualitative and quantitative responsibility. The post holder will be supervised by Dr Hana Chockler, and will work in close collaboration with other PDRAs in the Research Node.  

This Research Node is a collaboration with academics from the University of Edinburgh, University of Glasgow, Heriot-Watt University, King’s College London, University of Nottingham, and the University of Sussex. The researchers will also work closely with a diverse group of external project partners. The Node takes a multidisciplinary approach to its work, bringing together researchers with backgrounds in Computer Science and AI, Law, AI ethics, Social Studies of Information Technology and Design Ethnography. The diverse team offers a uniquely holistic perspective that combines technical, social science and humanities research to explore how to guarantee that autonomous systems can be trusted and integrated into society. 

The central purpose of the job is to develop methods for evaluation, testing and certification of human-centred AI systems involved in application areas such as AI-based medical diagnosis and autonomous mobility and transportation systems. A key challenge with these systems is systematic empirical evaluation of the full development and deployment pipeline and ensuring its compliance with legal and ethical frameworks for governance and regulation.  

The candidate is expected to have demonstrated a high level of practical skills, and in particular designing, implementing, and experimenting with AI systems, such as neural networks. The candidate is expected to work in close collaboration with the direction of testing and verification of autonomous systems. The focus will be on application domains such as medical diagnostics or autonomy.  

The ideal candidate would also have a strong track record of publication in leading conferences and journals in AI (e.g., IJCAI, AAAI, NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR) or in testing/verification (e.g., CAV, TACAS, ISSTA, ICSE, ASE). 

This post will be offered on a fixed-term contract terminating on 30/04/2024 

This is a full-time post - 100% full time equivalent