PhD Positions in Artificial Intelligence

Faculty: Faculty of Science
Level: Master’s
Application Deadline: 20-04-2026
Vacancy Number: 14893
Salary: €3.059 – €3.881

About the Position

Are you interested in improving the interpretability, robustness, and safety of AI by integrating causal reasoning?

The Causality team in the AMLab group at the University of Amsterdam is looking for 2 PhD students to work on the NWO VIDI sponsored project CANES (CAusal NEuro-Symbolic approach to integrating perception and abstract reasoning) led by prof. Sara Magliacane.

The project aims to develop a theoretically principled framework for safe, interpretable, and robust AI by integrating perception and reasoning through causality. You will learn Causally Grounded Concepts from unstructured data with theoretical guarantees, even in challenging settings with continuous and discrete valued concepts, correlations between concepts, and weak supervision signals.

Both PhD positions belong to the same project but have independent research directions:

• Project 1 – Discrete Concepts: Focus on developing strong theoretical guarantees for dependent and discrete concepts.

• Project 2 – Weak Supervision: Focus on integrating background knowledge and weak supervision (e.g., labels in downstream tasks) to provide similar guarantees.

What You Will Do

• Develop methods to learn concepts from unstructured data with theoretical guarantees

• Conduct machine learning research integrating causal reasoning

• Choose between two projects with autonomy, contributing to a shared framework

• Optionally perform a 6–12 month research visit at the Saarland Informatics Campus in Saarbrücken, Germany

• Invent, evaluate, and describe novel algorithms

• Present research results at international conferences, workshops, and journals

• Pursue and complete a PhD thesis within 4 years

• Assist in teaching activities and supervise bachelor or master students

What We Ask of You

• MSc in Artificial Intelligence, Statistics, Computer Science, or a related field

• Strong background in machine learning and/or statistics

• Preferred prior knowledge/experience with causality, explainable AI, and/or neurosymbolic approaches

What We Offer

• Temporary contract for 38 hours per week for 4 years

  • Initial contract: 18 months

  • Extension to full 4 years after satisfactory evaluation

  • Preferred start date: October 2026

• Gross monthly salary: €3,059 – €3,881 (scale P), based on 38 hours per week, depending on experience

• Additional 8% holiday allowance and 8.3% year-end allowance

• Possible eligibility for the 30% ruling for non-Dutch applicants

• Employment under the Collective Labour Agreement of Universities of the Netherlands

• Educational plan including courses, meetings, and teaching responsibilities

• Opportunity for international research visit (Saarland Informatics Campus)

Your Place at the UvA

Team and Institute

You will work within the Amsterdam Machine Learning Lab (AMLab) at the Informatics Institute (IvI). AMLab conducts research in machine learning, AI, and applications to large-scale data domains, including:

• Deep generative models

• Approximate inference and probabilistic programming

• Bayesian deep learning and causal inference

• Reinforcement learning

• Graph neural networks and geometric deep learning

You will join the Causality team, supervised by prof. Sara Magliacane, with potential research collaboration at the Saarland Informatics Campus in Germany.

About the University of Amsterdam

The University of Amsterdam (UvA) is ambitious, creative, and committed. Founded in 1632, it is the largest university in the Netherlands with:

• 42,000 students

• 6,000 staff

• 3,000 PhD students

UvA is an intellectual hub fostering curiosity and innovation.

Application Procedure

Applications must include:

• Detailed CV (including months of education and work experience)

• Letter of motivation, including suitability for the position and preference for one of the two projects

• Writing sample in English (e.g., master thesis draft or paper)

• Complete record of Bachelor and Master courses with grades and grading explanation

• Names and email addresses of two references (letters not required at application stage)

Note: All files except your CV should be submitted as a single PDF document.

Deadline: 20 April 2026
Knowledge security check: May be required (national guidelines)

Contact:
Sara Magliacane, Assistant Professor – [email protected]

Diversity, Equity & Inclusion

UvA maintains an equal opportunities policy. We value diversity and encourage all qualified candidates to apply, even if they do not meet 100% of the requested experience.

In your application, please refer to Polytechnicpositions.com