Junior Lecturer / PhD Candidate in Neuromorphic Computing at the Donders Centre for Cognition (1.0 FTE)

• Employment: 1.0 FTE
• Gross monthly salary: € 2,836 - € 4,474
• Faculty of Social Sciences
• Required background: Research University Degree
• Application deadline: 5 December 2021

Would you like to start your academic career off by obtaining your university teaching degree while working towards your PhD? Then join the Artificial Intelligence programme and the Donders Institute as a junior lecturer/PhD candidate. You will teach within one of the top AI programmes in the Netherlands and conduct research on brain-inspired energy-efficient computing.

As a Junior Lecturer you will assist with teaching in courses that are related to your research project, in particular AI: Principles & Techniques, Programming 1, and Programming 2. Apart from course management tasks you will have the opportunity to further develop your teaching skills in individual supervision, guest lecturing, and course development, culminating in obtaining the university teaching qualification (BKO) in the course of this appointment. The course coordinators will also be the supervisors of your research project described below. You will be expected to spend 60% of your working time on the research project, with the aim to obtain a PhD. In addition, 40% of your time should be spent on teaching within the AI programme.

Inspired by the structure of the brain (largely parallel computations in neurons, communicating with each other via synapses), neuromorphic architectures co-locate computation and memory in artificial spiking neural networks. The spiking behaviour allows for potentially energy-lean computations. A vital research challenge, however, is to understand and utilise the potential (and limitations) of these new architectures. Your research project contributes to this and aims to understand which types of computational problems in scientific computing can be efficiently solved by energy-lean computations on neuromorphic hardware and which types of problems are inherently energy-expensive. We seek to identify and utilise brain-inspired energy-efficient computing primitives, design patterns, and algorithmic approaches that are particularly promising for scientific computing (e.g. graph optimisation problems, partitioning and routing problems, matrix multiplications, scheduling problems). You will develop new data structures and algorithms, obtain lower and upper bounds on resource usage, and extend our formal model of computation with new insights.

Profile

• You have an MSc degree in computer science, artificial intelligence, applied mathematics, or a similar subject.
• You want to develop your skills, both in teaching and in academic research.
• You have demonstrable experience as a teaching assistant.
• You are willing to take ownership of the teaching duties assigned to you.
• You have a 'hacker-like attitude' towards discovering novel and unconventional algorithmic solutions.
• Experience with neuromorphic computing and/or low-level programming and specification (e.g. C, assembly language, VHDL) is a plus.

We are

You will work as a junior lecturer in the Artificial Intelligence programme. You will be given the opportunity to obtain your university teaching qualification (BKO) and  work towards your PhD degree as well. The AI programme offers a BSc in AI, a pre-Master's programme, and an MSc in AI, with specialisations in Cognitive Computing and Interactive Technology. Our fully English-taught programmes show a continuing steady growth in student numbers and are among the top AI programmes in the Netherlands. We have the ambition to be among the top European programmes in Cognitive AI.

You will conduct your research at the Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour. The Donders Institute is a world-class interfaculty research centre, that houses more than 700 researchers devoted to understanding the mechanistic underpinnings of the human mind. Research at the Donders Institute is focused around four themes: 1. Language and communication , 2. Perception, action and control , 3. Plasticity and memory , 4. Neural computation and Neurotechnology . Excellent, state-of-the-art research facilities are available for the broad range of research that is being conducted at the Donders Institute. The Donders Institute has been assessed by an international evaluation committee as 'excellent' and is recognised as a 'very stimulating environment for top researchers, as well as for young talent'. The Donders Institute fosters a collaborative, multidisciplinary, supportive research environment with a diverse international staff. English is the lingua franca at the Institute.

More specifically, you will be embedded in the Brain Inspired Computing group at the Donders Centre for Cognition. The members of this group are interested in the foundations and applications of neuromorphic computing, particularly with respect to algorithm design and the development of a formal neuromorphic complexity theory.

Radboud University
We want to get the best out of science, others and ourselves. Why? Because this is what the world around us desperately needs. Leading research and education make an indispensable contribution to a healthy, free world with equal opportunities for all. This is what unites the more than 24,000 students and 5,600 employees at Radboud University. And this requires even more talent, collaboration and lifelong learning. You have a part to play!

We offer

• Employment for 1.0 FTE.
• The gross monthly salary amounts to a minimum of €2,836 and a maximum of €4,474 based on a 38-hour working week, depending on previous education and number of years of relevant work experience (salary scale 10 ).
• You will receive 8% holiday allowance and 8.3% end-of-year bonus.
• It concerns a temporary employment for six years.
• You will be able to use our Dual Career and Family Care Services . Our Dual Career and Family Care Officer can assist you with family-related support, help your partner or spouse prepare for the local labour market, provide customized support in their search for employment and help your family settle in Nijmegen.
• Working for us means getting extra days off. In case of full-time employment, you can choose between 29 or 41 days of annual leave instead of the legally allotted 20.

Additional employment conditions
Work and science require good employment practices. This is reflected in Radboud University's primary and secondary employment conditions . You can make arrangements for the best possible work-life balance with flexible working hours, various leave arrangements and working from home. You are also able to compose part of your employment conditions yourself, for example, exchange income for extra leave days and receive a reimbursement for your sports subscription. And of course, we offer a good pension plan. You are given plenty of room and responsibility to develop your talents and realise your ambitions. Therefore, we provide various training and development schemes.
Would you like more information?

For questions about the position, please contact Johan Kwisthout, Associate Professor at +31 (0)24 365 59 77 or [email protected] . Alternatively, you can contact Franc Grootjen, Senior Lecturer at +31 (0)24 361 25 37 or [email protected] .

Practical information and applications
You can apply until 5 December 2021, exclusively using the button below. Kindly address your application to Johan Kwisthout. Please fill in the application form and attach the following documents:

• Letter of motivation.
• CV including contact information of two references.
• If applicable, links to open source repositories.

The first round of interviews will take place on Monday 13 December.
We can imagine you're curious about our application procedure . It offers a rough outline of what you can expect during the application process, how we handle your personal data and how we deal with internal and external candidates.

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