Postdoctoral Fellow in Past social network reconstruction from material culture data at IT University of Copenhagen

The IT University of Copenhagen invites highly motivated individuals to apply for a Postdoc position starting 1 September 2024 or soon thereafter.

The IT University’s vision is to create and share knowledge that is profound and leads to groundbreaking information technology and services for the benefit of humanity. The Computer Science Department seeks to conduct research and education that are both foundational and have impact on industry and society.

Job description
Recent developments in archaeology make use of network science tools. The aim is to map the relationships between past entities we can reconstruct from archaeological remains. Using network science techniques, we can test archaeological theories about higher-order relationships in ancient times, and discover potentially unexplored ones.

A key challenge is that archaeological data is extremely sparse, and whatever is found is affected by heavy biases – survivorship, gender, status biases, and more. The works dealing with missing data in network science apply a statistical theory-driven top-down approach. This approach requires, for instance, the ability to measure the network multiple times, or to have accurate models of the edge generating processes. Both are unfeasible with archaeological records.

The aim of this fellowship is to develop bottom-up data-driven approaches that can assist reconstructing a complex network from fragmentary and biased archaeological remains. The candidate will be expected to:

• Develop frequent pattern mining techniques and graph neural networks to enhance link prediction in the scenario of extreme and unrepresentative data sparsity.
  • Integrate these techniques in a broader framework able to reconstruct a complex network from archaeological remains.
  • Extend statistical measures to be applied to data living on the complex space defined by a network. This involves creating analogues to information entropy, cross entropy, cosine similarity, and more to be applied to vectors defining node attributes.
  • Apply such novel statistical measures to test archaeological theories.

The IT University invites all qualified researchers regardless of age, gender, religious affiliation or ethnic background to apply for the positions.

Application deadline: 23 May 2024, at 23:59 CET.
Applications/enclosures received at ITU after the application deadline will not be taken into consideration. If you submit an application, it is your responsibility to ensure that it arrives before the deadline so please allow sufficient time for upload of publications and other documents.

Please note that all application material will be destroyed after the assessment.

Application procedure
You can only apply for this position through our e-recruitment system. Apply by pressing the button "Apply for position" in the job announcement on our website: http://en.itu.dk/About-ITU/Vacancies

Further information
Questions about the positions can be directed to Associate Professor, Michele Coscia, IT University of Copenhagen, [email protected].
Questions related to the application procedure may be directed to HR, [email protected].

The IT University may use shortlisting in connection to the recruitment process. In case of shortlisting, the Chair of the hiring committee selects applicants for assessment in consultation with the hiring committee after the application deadline. All applicants are notified whether their application has been passed for assessment. The shortlisting of candidates for assessment is based on the criteria in the job posting.

The applicant will be accessed according to the Appointment Order from the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation of 13 March 2012.

Applications without the above-mentioned required documents will not be assessed.

Application
The application and all other documents ought to be in English and must include:
• A motivated application (cover letter), including a detailed description of your qualifications and brief statements of research and teaching plans
• A full CV, including name, address, phone number, e-mail, previous and present employment and academic background
• Documentation of academic degrees (copy of degree certificates etc.)
• Relevant scientific publication or/and PhD thesis written by the applicant
• Documentation of pedagogical experience and teaching record within one or more of the teaching areas listed for the position

Employment as postdoc is a temporary position for up to 4 years at the same University.

Qualification Requirements
The following qualifications are required:
• Candidates are required to have academic qualifications at PhD level

The position is for a period of 23 months.

Salary and terms of employment
Appointment and salary will be in accordance with the Ministry of Taxation’s agreement with the Danish Confederation of Professional Associations (AC) and job structure for academic staff at Universities.

Working in Copenhagen
Copenhagen has a solid educational system, a rich cultural life, universal healthcare, good childcare, and well-functioning infrastructure. Copenhagen is among the world’s most livable cities according to the Economist Global Liveability Index. Living and working in Copenhagen will be a good experience for you and your family.

Working at the IT University
Located in modern architecture, a 6-minute metro ride from the center of Copenhagen, the IT University offers an informal working environment, a varied everyday life, and a highly motivated, ambitious, competent, and diverse international faculty, with PhD degrees from 17 different countries. The IT University is an equal opportunity employer and prides itself in actively and successfully pursuing an improved gender balance among students and among faculty.

About the Computer Science Department
The ITU Computer Science Department conducts research in all aspects of computer science and data science, including algorithms, databases, government IT, machine learning, natural language processing, network science, optimization, programming languages, quantum computing, robotics, security, semantics, software engineering, software verification, type theory, and more, as well as a range of applications. The department has 55 permanent faculty, 65 PhDs and postdocs, as well as other staff. It is responsible for the IT University's most technical education programs BSc Software Development, BSc Data Science, MSc Computer Science, MSc Data Science, and MSc Software Design.

General information
The IT University of Copenhagen (ITU) is a teaching and research-based tertiary institution concerned with information technology (IT) and the opportunities it offers. The IT University has more than 160 full-time Faculty members. Research and teaching in information technology span all academic activities which involve computers including computer science, information and media sciences, humanities and social sciences, business impact and the commercialization of IT.

The research environment
The candidate will be a member of the NERDS group at the IT University’s Computer Science Department, as well as part of a multidisciplinary team composed by archaeology researchers from UrbNet group at Aarhus University. Both groups are highly international and well-funded, working on a broad range of research topics. The NERDS group was awarded the 2022 "Best Research Environment" prize by the Danish Young Academy.

The candidate is expected to have proficient skills in network analysis and network science, linear algebra, and machine learning. The candidate should feel motivated by doing multidisciplinary research, and be able to handle qualitative data as well as quantitative.

Lokation: Institutet - Institut for Datalogi

Application deadline: 23 May 2024