Summary
The University of Amsterdam (UvA) is offering two PhD positions within the Faculty of Science to work on a new Horizon Europe project titled “Bringing Explainability, Verifiability and Trustworthiness into Multimodal LLMs in the Clinical Practice.” These roles focus on advancing the state-of-the-art in explainability and uncertainty representation for Large Language Model (LLM) reasoning agents in healthcare.
| Institution | University of Amsterdam (UvA) |
| Faculty | Faculty of Science |
| Designation | PhD Researcher (2 positions) |
| Research Area | Natural Language Processing (NLP), Machine Learning, and Explainable AI (XAI) |
| Location | Amsterdam, Netherlands |
| Salary | €3,204 – €4,051 gross monthly |
| Deadline | December 6, 2026 |
Designation
PhD Candidate / Researcher in Natural Language Processing (NLP).
Research Area
The research focuses on how uncertainty, interpretability, and explanations work together to help healthcare users judge automated decisions. Specific areas include:
- PhD 1: Structured and explainable representations of uncertainty (e.g., hierarchical Bayesian models, graph-based representations).
- PhD 2: Conversational and evidence-grounded, uncertainty-aware explanations for multimodal clinical records.
Location
Amsterdam, Netherlands (University of Amsterdam, Informatics Institute and ILLC).
Eligibility/Qualification
To be considered for these positions, applicants must meet the following criteria:
- A Master’s degree (completed or near completion) in Natural Language Processing, Machine Learning, Computer Science, or a related field.
- A strong background in NLP and machine learning.
- Proficiency in scientific programming and training ML models.
- Professional command of the English language.
- A commitment to fundamental academic research and collaborative work environments.
Scholarship Description
The successful candidates will join a Horizon Europe consortium involving over a dozen partner institutes across Europe, the UK, and Canada. The project explores how to represent and communicate the uncertainty of generative models and how to extract organized explanations from long, multimodal clinical documents. Responsibilities include:
- Conducting state-of-the-art research and publishing in peer-reviewed conferences (NLP, ML).
- Assisting in teaching duties (teaching assistant for bachelor/master courses).
- Completing a PhD thesis within the four-year appointment.
- Collaborating with the Language Technology Lab and the Institute for Logic, Language and Computation (ILLC).
Benefits:
- A 4-year contract (initial 18 months with a performance-based extension).
- 8% holiday allowance and 8.3% year-end bonus.
- 232 vacation hours per year (based on full-time).
- Access to professional development courses and internal training.
- Relocation support for international employees.
How to Apply
Interested candidates should apply online via the official UvA vacancy portal. Applications must include the following documents (all files except the CV should be merged into a single PDF):
- A detailed CV including months and years of education/work experience.
- A motivation letter (maximum 1 page) explaining your interest and fit for the project (must be written without GenAI).
- A copy of your Master’s thesis (or an English abstract if the thesis is in another language).
- Copies of relevant Bachelor’s and Master’s transcripts and diplomas.
Last Date for Apply
The application deadline is December 6, 2026.
