Job Description
Idiap Research Institute seeks qualified candidates for a PhD student (Doctoral Researcher) position at the intersection of machine learning and natural language processing. This researcher will investigate representation learning for language, as part of a Swiss NSF project building on our recent Bayesian extension of transformers. Our nonparametric variational information bottleneck induces more abstract and interpretable attention-based representations, which we will leverage and extend to investigate how LLMs can induce and process graph-structured representations.
The successful PhD candidate will join the Natural Language Understanding group at Idiap, under the supervision of Dr. James Henderson. She/he will also become a doctoral student at EPFL ) conditional on a parallel application to, and acceptance by, the EPFL Doctoral School ).
Appointment for a PhD position is for a maximum of 4 years, provided successful progress, and should lead to a dissertation. Starting date is to be negotiated, but expected to be Spring 2026.
Application deadline: 5th January 2026
Profile
The ideal PhD candidates should have the following:
* Masters degree in computer science, artificial intelligence, or related fields
* Background in machine learning or natural language processing
* Strong mathematical and programming skills
* Fluency in English is required; French is a plus.
All queries related to the advertised position can be sent to Dr. James Henderson ).
About Idiap
The IDIAP Research Institute has been among the leaders in Switzerland in artificial and cognitive intelligence since 1991. Voice and visual recognition, natural language processing, machine learning, human-machine interaction and robotics are some of the research fields at the Institute. Based in Martigny, in the Swiss Alps, Idiap is involved in research projects at local, national and international levels in both fundamental and applied research settings. The Institute is affiliated with the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL).
At Idiap we place great emphasis on diversity and we know diversity fosters creativity and innovation. We are committed to equality of opportunity, to being fair and inclusive, and to being a place where we all belong. Employment at Idiap is based solely on a person's merit and qualifications. Idiap does not discriminate against any employee or applicant because of race, color, religion, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity/expression, national origin, disability, age, marital status, pregnancy, or any other basis protected by law.
Required languages
*
English - Level advanced
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