PhD Student: Reliable Conversational AI for Personalized Data Exploration (100%)

School: School of Engineering
Starting date: 01.10.2025 or by appointment

• Join the Explainable AI research group at the ZHAW Centre for Artificial Intelligence as a fully funded PhD student, contributing to the international and interdisciplinary Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) project focusing on developing reliable conversational AI systems for domain-specific multimodal data exploration and analysis
• Earn your PhD degree through the collaborative program with the University of Zurich
• Benefit from world-class training and mentorship by leading experts while tackling cutting-edge, practice-oriented research challenges and driving innovation.
• Experience international mobility through a research stay abroad (at CNRS in Grenoble, France) and participate in workshops, conferences, and training programs
• Develop and implement high-quality, innovative multimodal AI approaches to enhance large language models with features like factuality, interpretability, soundness, and guidance
• Perform comprehensive experimental evaluations to assess and analyse the performance of your developed approaches
• Drive the adaptation and evaluation of the developed conversational AI system for a real-world medical use case in close collaboration with domain experts from University Hospital Zurich, specifically exploring and analysing patient-specific multimodal medical data
• Disseminate your research findings through publications and presentations in peer-reviewed journals and conferences
• Provide occasional teaching support to lecturers

• A recent, excellent Master's degree in computer science, data science, or a related technical/scientific field, with focus on machine learning and artificial intelligence
• A strong interest in conversational multimodal AI, AI explainability and AI in healthcare, with prior experience in these domains being advantageous
• Proficiency in software development (ideally Python) and familiarity with deep learning frameworks and tools like PyTorch
• Participate in a secondment abroad to develop innovative explainability methodologies for the systems
• Experience with generative AI is beneficial
• Possess strong intrinsic motivation, creative problem-solving abilities for complex challenges, meticulous and dependable work habits, and capability to function effectively both independently and collaboratively within international, interdisciplinary teams
• Excellent English language skills
• Have nor resided or carried out main activity (work, studies, etc.) in Switzerland for more than 12 months in the 3 years immediately prior the recruitment (since October 2022 if starting in October 2025)
• In exchange, we provide the opportunity to dive into cutting-edge AI methodologies to address open research challenges with substantial practical impact, and involvement in the prestigious MSCA program with its innovative focus and excellent career development opportunities – all while completing a PhD at the University of Zurich

Zurich University of Applied Sciences ZHAW is one of Switzerland's largest multidisciplinary universities of applied sciences, with over 14'000 students and 3'400 faculty and staff.

The School of Engineering (SoE), as one of the leading educational and research institutions in Switzerland, focuses on topics relevant to the future. 14 institutes and centres guarantee high-quality education, research and development with a focus on the areas of energy, mobility, information and health.

The Centre for Artificial Intelligence (CAI) maintains a growing number of research groups in the fields of Natural Language Processing and Computer Vision, Perception and Cognition, Autonomous Learning Systems, Trustworthy AI and AI Engineering. The CAI conducts method-oriented applied research and development at the highest level in the field of machine learning and is committed to a human-centered approach to artificial intelligence, thereby actively shaping the ethical dimension.

We are looking for a deeply interested, technically skilled personality. Please honor us with a tailored cover letter and highlight facts that underline your ability to achieve high. We are looking forward to hearing from you!

ZHAW is committed to gender-mixed and diverse teams in order to promote equality, diversity and innovation. In order to increase the proportion of women in management positions, applications from women are particularly welcome.