PhD Fellowships at the Max Planck ETH Center for Learning Systems

The Max Planck ETH Center for Learning Systems is a joint research center of ETH Zurich and the Max Planck Society. The Center’s mission is to pursue research in the design and analysis of learning systems, synthetic or natural. This initiative brings together more than 40 professors and senior researchers in the fields of machine learning, perception, robotics on large and small scales, as well as neuroscience. We offer
PhD Fellowships at the Max Planck ETH Center for Learning Systems
The Center offers a unique fellowship program, where PhD students are co-supervised by one advisor from ETH Zurich and one from the MPI for Intelligent Systems in Tübingen and Stuttgart. PhD students are expected to take advantage of the opportunities offered by both organizations and to actively seek cross-group collaborations. The Center also offers a wide range of activities like retreats, workshops, and summer schools, as well as the possibility to engage in organizing such events. This is an exciting new program and admission is highly competitive. Each PhD fellow will have a primary location (chosen based on interests and match) and spends one year at the other location as well. Fellowships will be remunerated through employment contracts, subjected to the rules of the Max-Planck-Society and ETH Zurich, respectively. All PhD fellows will register as graduate students at ETH Zurich and - upon successful completion of their PhD project - be granted a doctoral degree by ETH Zurich. Details of this process are governed by ETH regulations and committees.
We encourage applications from outstanding candidates with academic backgrounds in Mathematics, Physics, Computer Science, Engineering, Materials Science, Neuroscience and related fields, and a keen interest in doing basic research in areas like: Machine Learning and Empirical Inference of Complex Systems, Machine Intelligence, including Machine Vision and Natural Language Understanding, Perception-Action-Cycle for Autonomous Systems, Robust Model-Based Control for Intelligent Behavior, Robust Perception in Complex Environments, Design, Fabrication, and Control of Synthetic, Bio-Inspired, and Bio-Hybrid Micro/Nanoscale Robotic Systems, Haptic Intelligence, Data-Driven Computational Biology, or Neurotechnology and Emergent Intelligence in Nervous Systems. We seek to increase the number of women in areas where they are underrepresented and therefore explicitly encourage women to apply. Furthermore, we are committed to increasing the number of individuals with disabilities in its workforce and therefore encourage applications from such qualified individuals.
For further information please contact Dr. Magdalena Seebauer at magdalena.seebauer-AT-inf.ethz.ch (no application documents) or visit our website http://learning-systems.org/.
We are looking forward to receiving your online application consisting of a complete CV (incl. a list of publications, talks and awards), a short mission statement (max. 1-2 pages) outlining your research interests, and scanned transcripts of certificates (bachelor’s degree, master’s degree, other degrees). Please note that we exclusively accept applications submitted through our online application portal. Applications via email or postal services will not be considered. Please arrange for 2-3 reference letters to be sent directly per email to Dr. Magdalena Seebauer within the application deadline.
The deadline for applications is November 7, 2017. The selection interviews will take place on January 18 and January 19, 2018 at the Max Planck Campus in Tübingen, Germany.