PhD position in the area of Causal Inference, University of Amsterdam

PhD position and Postdoc position in the area of Causal Inference
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The University of Amsterdam invites applications for two fully funded positions for a PhD student and a postdoctoral researcher. Both positions are in the area of causal modeling, reasoning and discovery, with a strong focus on applications in molecular biology. 


Application closing date:  September 15, 2014
Preferred starting date:   November 1, 2014 (later starting date is possible)
Duration:                  4 years for the PhD position; 
                           3 years for the postdoc position.


The positions are part of the VIDI project "Causal Inference: Theory for Applications" funded by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO), and will be supervised by dr. Joris Mooij. 


About the project
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Many questions in science concern causal relationships. Causal inference, a branch of statistics and machine learning, studies how cause-effect relationships can be discovered from data and how these can be used to make predictions in situations where a system has been perturbed by an external intervention. The ability to reliably make such predictions is of great value for practical applications in a variety of disciplines. The research will focus on the development of new theory and efficient algorithms for robust discovery of causal relationships and estimation of causal effects from a combination of observational data, interventional data, and background knowledge. This work will be done with a strong focus on applications in molecular biology, one of the most promising areas for automated causal discovery from data, enabling a thorough validation of causal prediction methods in practice.


About the academic environment
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The successful candidates will be based in the Intelligent Autonomous Systems (IAS) Group led by prof. dr. Max Welling, which is part of the Intelligent Systems Lab Amsterdam (ISLA) within the Informatics Institute (IvI) at the University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands. The institute was recently ranked among the top 50 computer science departments in the world by the 2011 QS World University IT Rankings. ISLA consists of 20 members of faculty, 20 post-doctoral researchers, and more than 50 PhD students. Members of the lab are actively pursuing a variety of research initiatives, including machine learning, decision-theoretic planning and learning, causal discovery, multiagent systems, human-computer-interaction, natural language processing, information retrieval, and computer vision.


Some of the things we have to offer:
* competitive pay and excellent benefits;
* very friendly, interactive and international working environment;
* new building located near the city center (10 minutes by bicycle) of one of Europe's most beautiful and lively cities;
* access to high-end computing facilities (cluster with 4,000+ cores).


English is the working language within the Informatics Institute. Since Amsterdam is a very international city where almost everybody speaks and understands English, candidates need not be afraid of the language barrier.


Further information
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For further information, including instructions on submitting an application, see the official job ads at:


http://www.uva.nl/en/about-the-uva/working-at-the-uva/vacancies/item/14-257.html (PhD)
http://www.uva.nl/en/about-the-uva/working-at-the-uva/vacancies/item/14-256.html (postdoc)


Informal inquiries can be made by email to Joris Mooij (j.m.mooij@uva.nl).