HICT: Doctoral Candidate in Explainable AI for Systems Biomedicine

The Helsinki Doctoral Education Network in Information and Communications Technology (HICT) is a collaborative doctoral education network hosted jointly by Aalto University and the University of Helsinki, the two leading universities within this area in Finland. The network serves as a collaboration platform for doctoral education combining all the relevant subfields of computer science and information technology at Aalto University and the University of Helsinki. It involves at present 80 professors and almost 300 doctoral students, and the participating units graduate altogether more than 40 new doctors each year.

We offer the possibility to join world-class research groups in both universities with multiple interesting research projects to choose from. The list of all open Doctoral Candidate positions in this joint call can be found here: https://hict.fi/admissions/

HICT Doctoral Candidate in Explainable AI for Systems Biomedicine 

Supervisor(s): Juho Rousu (Aalto University)

In this project, we aim to develop AI technologies to help knowledge discovery in big molecular biology data, with applications to improve diagnoses and personalized treatments of complex diseases.  We will extend our recently developed technology for learning sparse non-linear models, to the analysis of multi-view network data (Huusari et al., 2021), and develop a capability of embedding prior knowledge for explainability. In applications, we will focus on the analysis of metagenomic data arising from the human gut microbiome  (Ravikrishnan and Raman, 2021), which is known to have a significant role in many diseases such as irritable bowel syndrome and diabetes. The results are expected to give new knowledge on the role of the gut microbiome in these diseases, explained in terms of key metabolic signatures, and thus enable improved diagnosis and treatment. In machine learning, the methods extend the state of the art in learning from complex multi-view and network data.

Other supervisors of this project are:

Sahely Bhadra (IIT Palakkad, India), Karthik Raman (IIT Madras, India)

Huusari, R., Bhadra, S., Capponi, C., Kadri, H. and Rousu, J., 2021. Learning primal-dual sparse kernel machines. arXiv preprint arXiv:2108.12199.
Ravikrishnan, A. and Raman, K., 2021. Unraveling microbial interactions in the gut microbiome. bioRxiv.

Ready to apply?

If you want to join our community and start your journey towards Doctoral dissertation submit your application via our electronic recruitment system. The application form will close 6th February 2022 at 23:59 Finnish time (UTC +2).

If you are currently working at Aalto University, please submit your application via HR System Workday (Career – Find jobs – Apply).

Please be prepared to add the following attachments:

• Cover letter
• CV
• Transcript of your Master’s studies

You will be asked to provide also the contact details of 2-3 academic referees.

What we offer?

HICT is a network of world-class professors and researchers with huge passion for their field of study. In HICT you will become part of enthusiastic and professional team of bold and innovative thinkers.

During your Doctoral studies you will be a full-time employee in either Aalto University or the University of Helsinki depending on the supervisor and the research area. You will be covered by occupational health care based on the employment contract.

More information:

General information about the joint HICT call and HICT: https://hict.fi/

General questions about HICT: Christina Sirviö, HICT team

General questions about recruitment process: Sanni Kirmanen, Aalto University HR

[email protected]

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