Scroll down for more info on IDSIA and Switzerland

Both positions are filled - thanks again for the numerous excellent applications! Jürgen Schmidhuber, March 2007.

.
evolution

1 Postdoc and 1 PhD fellowship

(2 years, prolongation expected)
other
job
at
TUM

Start: May 1 2007.
Salary: Commensurate with experience - postdoc: roughly SFR 72,000 / year (US$ 57,000 as of Nov 2006); PhD student: roughly SFR 34,000 / year, (US$ 27,000 as of Nov 2006). Low taxes. There is travel funding in case of papers accepted at important conferences.
For research on the theory and practice of reinforcement learning we are seeking an outstanding postdoc and an outstanding PhD student with experience / interest in topics such as: reinforcement learning, especially for POMDPs, artificial evolution, statistical / Bayesian approaches to machine learning, recurrent neural networks (RNN), RNN evolution, adaptive robotics, artificial intelligence, universal learning machines, curiosity- driven learning.

The official language at IDSIA is English.

Applicants should submit as soon as possible: (i) Curriculum vitae, (ii) List of three references and their email addresses, (iii) Brief statement on how their research interests fit the topics above.

Submit your application in plain ASCII format (plain text files!) by email to juergen@idsia.ch. Small PDF attachments are ok (but no .doc files, please). Do NOT send large files; instead send URLs. In the subject header, please mention your name and the keywords rl2007 and postdoc or phd, respectively. For example, if your name is Jo Mo, use
subject: Jo Mo phd rl2007 or subject: Jo Mo postdoc rl2007

more
jobs
at
IDSIA
idsia logo
IDSIA's research focuses on combinatorial optimization and artificial ants, artificial recurrent neural networks, learning robots, universal predictors and reinforcement learners, optimal universal search algorithms (e.g., Gödel machine & OOPS), complexity and generalization issues, unsupervised learning and information theory, forecasting, evolutionary computation. IDSIA is small but visible, competitive, and influential. Its algorithms hold the world records for several important operations research benchmarks (e.g., see NATURE 406(6791):39-42 for an overview of IDSIA's artificial ant algorithms). Some of IDSIA's results were reviewed not only in science journals such as Nature, Science, Scientific American, but also in the popular press, including TIME magazine, the New York Times, der SPIEGEL, and many others. IDSIA has strong ties to the TU Munich lab of cognitive robotics at TUM Computer Science.
IDSIA was the smallest of the world's top ten AI labs listed in the 1997 "X-Lab Survey" by Business Week magazine, and ranked in fourth place in the category "Computer Science - Biologically Inspired". IDSIA's most important work was done after 1997 though.

Some previous IDSIA postdocs who went on to become professors

.
Einstein
Switzerland is a good place for scientists. It is the origin of special relativity (1905) and the World Wide Web (1990), is associated with 105 Nobel laureates, boasts by far the most Nobel prizes per capita (350% more than the US), the world's highest number of publications per capita, the highest number of patents per capita, the most cited single-author paper ever, the highest citation impact factor, etc.
Switzerland is the world's most competitive country, according to the Global Competitiveness Report 2006-2007 by the World Economic Forum.
.
Matterhorn
IDSIA is located near the beautiful city of Lugano in Ticino (pictures), the scenic southernmost province of Switzerland. Milano, Italy's center of fashion and finance, is 1 hour away, Venice 3 hours.
For decades, Switzerland has been the world's richest nation. It also got the highest ranking in the list of happiest countries.
.