PhD Candidate in Trustworthy AI

This is NTNU

NTNU is a broad-based university with a technical-scientific profile and a focus in professional education. The university is located in three cities with headquarters in Trondheim.

At NTNU, 9,000 employees and 43,000 students work to create knowledge for a better world.

You will find more information about working at NTNU and the application process here.

About the job

For a position as a PhD Candidate, the goal is a completed doctoral education up to an obtained doctoral degree.

The adoption of AI has experienced remarkable growth in recent years, with AI systems and components now integrated into numerous critical tasks. As a result, trusting AI workflows has emerged as a vital prerequisite for the widespread acceptance of recent technological advancements in this domain. The operational paradigm of AI systems has evolved from centralized to fully distributed, with ownership of training data, model training, and model usage often attributed to disparate actors without established trust between them. This decentralization introduces vulnerabilities, as adversarial machine learning techniques can pose significant threats to the accuracy of AI systems, the integrity of associated data, and the privacy of entities involved in the training or inference phases. Consequently, there is an urgent need for methods and tooling to safeguard AI systems against these threats and enhance trust in their capabilities and reliability.

The position is within the the Critical Infrastructure Security and Resilience group at NTNU and is closely related to the “Trustworthy AI” pillar of the Enfield: European Lighthouse to Manifest Trustworthy and Green AI HORIZON Europe that is being coordinated by the group.

Your immediate leader is the Leader of the Information Security Discipline at the Department of Information Security and Communication Technology.

Duties of the position

• The PhD candidate will work on challenging research problems related to trustworthy AI, towards developing methods and tooling to safeguard AI systems against cybersecurity threats and enhance trust in their capabilities and reliability.
• The work will also include investigating cryptographic techniques (e.g., zero-knowledge proofs, distributed ledger technology) that enable the verification of processing for AI, to allow adoption of AI functionality in mission critical systems for which integrity of operations is demanded.

Required selection criteria

• You must have a professionally relevant background in Information Security, Artificial Intelligence, Computer Science or similar engineering education.
• Your education must correspond to a five-year Norwegian degree program, where 120 credits are obtained at master's level.
• You must have a strong academic background from your previous studies and an average grade from the master's degree program, or equivalent education, which is equal to B or better compared with NTNU's grading scale. If you do not have letter grades from previous studies, you must have an equally good academic basis. If you have a weaker grade background, you may be assessed if you can document that you are particularly suitable for a PhD education.
• Master's students can apply, but the master's degree must be obtained and documented by 31 July 2024.
• You must meet the requirements for admission to the IE faculty's doctoral program.

The appointment is to be made in accordance with Regulations on terms of employment for positions such as postdoctoral fellow, Phd candidate, research assistant and specialist candidate and Regulations concerning the degrees of Philosophiae Doctor (PhD) and Philosodophiae Doctor (PhD) in artistic research national guidelines for appointment as PhD, post doctor and research assistant

Preferred selection criteria

• Background in information/cyber security.
• Experience with machine learning.
• Strong motivation for high quality research.
• Programming and modeling skills in relevant tools (e.g. MATLAB, LabView).
• Research background within at least one of the aforementioned fields.
• Excellent communication skills.
• Completeness of application.
• Excellent written and oral English language skills

Personal characteristics

• Be scientifically curious and open to new research challenges.
• Demonstrate independence and persistence in addressing technical problems.
• Be flexible and reliable, with ability to work effectively independently and as part of a team.

Emphasis will be placed on personal and interpersonal qualities.

We offer

• exciting and stimulating tasks in a strong international academic environment
• an open and inclusive work environment with dedicated colleagues
• favourable terms in the Norwegian Public Service Pension Fund
• employee benefits

Salary and conditions

As a PhD candidate (code 1017) you are normally paid from gross NOK 532 200 per annum before tax, depending on qualifications and seniority. From the salary, 2% is deducted as a contribution to the Norwegian Public Service Pension Fund.

The period of employment is 3 years.

Appointment to a PhD position requires that you are admitted to the PhD programme in Information Security and Communication Technology within three months of employment, and that you participate in an organized PhD programme during the employment period.

The engagement is to be made in accordance with the regulations in force concerning State Employees and Civil Servants, and the acts relating to Control of the Export of Strategic Goods, Services and Technology. Candidates who by assessment of the application and attachment are seen to conflict with the criteria in the latter law will be prohibited from recruitment to NTNU.

After the appointment you must assume that there may be changes in the area of work.

It is a prerequisite you can be present at and accessible to the institution daily.

About the application

The application and supporting documentation to be used as the basis for the assessment must be in English.

Publications and other scientific work must follow the application. Please note that your application will be considered based solely on information submitted by the application deadline. You must therefore ensure that your application clearly demonstrates how your skills and experience fulfil the criteria specified above.

The application must include:

• CV and certificates.
• Transcripts and diplomas for bachelor's and master's degrees. If you have not completed the master's degree, you must submit a confirmation that the master's thesis has been submitted.
• A copy of the master's thesis. If you recently have submitted your master's thesis, you can attach a draft of the thesis. Documentation of a completed master's degree must be presented before taking up the position.
• Name and contact information of three referees.
• If you have publications or other relevant research work.

If all, or parts, of your education has been taken abroad, we also ask you to attach documentation of the scope and quality of your entire education, both bachelor's and master's education, in addition to other higher education. Description of the documentation required can be found here. If you already have a statement from NOKUT, please attach this as well.

We will take joint work into account. If it is difficult to identify your efforts in the joint work, you must enclose a short description of your participation.

In the evaluation of which candidate is best qualified, emphasis will be placed on education, experience and personal and interpersonal qualities. Motivation, ambitions, and potential will also count in the assessment of the candidates.

NTNU is committed to following evaluation criteria for research quality according to The San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment - DORA.

General information

Working at NTNU

NTNU believes that inclusion and diversity is our strength. We want to recruit people with different competencies, educational backgrounds, life experiences and perspectives to contribute to solving our social responsibilities within education and research. We will facilitate for our employees’ needs.

NTNU is working actively to increase the number of women employed in scientific positions and has a number of resources to promote equality.

The city of Gjøvik has a population of 30 000 and is a town known for its rich music and cultural life. The beautiful nature surrounding the city is ideal for an active outdoor life! The Norwegian welfare state, including healthcare, schools, kindergartens and overall equality, is probably the best of its kind in the world.

As an employee at NTNU, you must at all times adhere to the changes that the development in the subject entails and the organizational changes that are adopted.

A public list of applicants with name, age, job title and municipality of residence is prepared after the application deadline. If you want to reserve yourself from entry on the public applicant list, this must be justified. Assessment will be made in accordance with current legislation. You will be notified if the reservation is not accepted.

If you have any questions about the position, please contact Teresa.k.hoel, telephone 61135261, email Teresa.k.hoel@ntnu.no. If you have any questions about the recruitment process, please contact Teresa.k.hoel@ntnu.no

If you think this looks interesting and in line with your qualifications, please submit your application electronically via jobbnorge.no with your CV, diplomas and certificates attached. Applications submitted elsewhere will not be considered. Upon request, you must be able to obtain certified copies of your documentation.

Application deadline: 31.05.24