Research Assistant / Ph.D. position (FK II Department of Computer Science, Area of Trustworthy AI)

About us:
The University of Oldenburg is receiving 22.5 million euros from the Ministry of Science and Culture (MWK) and the Volkswagen Foundation from the "Strategic Development of Potential" funding line to sharpen its profile and strengthen its national and international competitiveness through the project "A Programme for Excellence. Developing Strengths and Building Potentials by Interdisciplinary and International Networking". Among other things, this is to be achieved through consistent networking across national and international borders, the promotion of students and scientists in early career phases and the strengthening of interdisciplinary research priorities in socially relevant and innovative areas.

In this "Programme for Excellence", the AI Incubator "Connected Health Nordwest" is currently being established. Its goal is to strengthen the collaboration in the field of AI between the University Medicine Oldenburg (UMO) and other regional partners. The AI Incubator is integrated in the innovation quarter IQON and supported by UMO, the Department of Computer Science of the University of Oldenburg, OFFIS, and the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI).

As part of the AI Incubator, the research group "Secure and Trustworthy Infrastructure", led by Dr. Federico Mazzone, designs secure, trustworthy, and privacy-preserving machine learning models and infrastructure for medical applications. The main research topics include applied cryptography, privacy-enhancing technologies such as homomorphic encryption, secure multi-party computation, and differential privacy, as well as trustworthy AI properties including robustness, explainability, fairness, and auditability. Further research directions include secure collaborative data processing and the development of practical privacy-preserving solutions for distributed healthcare environments.

The aim of the announced Ph.D. project is the development of secure, trustworthy, and privacy-preserving infrastructure for future healthcare systems. This includes the creation of solutions for secure data processing and data communication between hospitals, healthcare providers, and home-care environments, considering the high privacy-sensitivity of medical data and the increasing spread of AI-based technologies in healthcare.
Your tasks:

• Addressing challenging research questions at the intersection of trustworthy AI and privacy, within the Connected Health Nordwest AI Incubator described above
• Publishing scientific papers in this field at leading international conferences
• Co-supervising students in this research area
• Collaboration with other researchers in the Secure and Trustworthy Infrastructure research group, the chair for Safety-Security-Interaction, as well as other groups within AI Incubator "Connected Health Nordwest" and beyond, including joint publications
• Consolidating and analyzing interdisciplinary results from Connected Health Nordwest's projects, for example in project activities and workshops
• Co-developing the secure and trustworthy infrastructure required for the AI Incubator "Connected Health Nordwest"

Your profile:
Requirements:

• A completed academic degree (Diplom or Master) in Computer Science or Mathematics (with appropriate specialization in Computer Science); other comparable fields are also considered
  • Topics in cybersecurity and machine learning (both broadly interpreted) must have been a documented part of your studies.
• Very good programming skills in relevant programming languages
• Excellent English proficiency, both written and spoken
• Willingness to pursue a doctoral degree
• A convincing motivation letter (max. 1 page) relating your background and interests to the research themes of the AI Incubator "Connected Health Nordwest". The statement should at least address:
  • What particularly interests you about the mentioned research area?
  • How does your academic background fit the position, and what technical knowledge do you have that qualifies you particularly well for the role? If possible, mention a concrete project, thesis, publication, internship, or personal initiative from your past experience that best demonstrates your preparation for this position
  • What would you like to contribute scientifically to the mentioned research area?

Advantageous:

• Practical experience in academic research, demonstrated by, for example, a by you (co-)authored peer-reviewed publication in relevant conferences or journals
• Practical experience with machine learning models, for example through personal projects
• Strong mathematical understanding of machine learning models, for example through dedicated coursework
• Knowledge of applied cryptography and privacy-enhancing technologies

We offer:

• The opportunity to work on exciting research topics with great scientific relevance
• Prospects for publishing research results in leading international conferences such as USENIX Security, IEEE S&P, ACM CCS, NDSS, ...
• Support and guidance during your employment by both Dr. Federico Mazzone (Postdoc at the chair for Safety-Security-Interaction and head of the research group "Secure and Trustworthy Infrastructure") and Prof. Dr. Andreas Peter (head of the chair Safety-Security-Interaction), especially regarding your research
• A young, friendly, and highly motivated team
• Compensation according to collective agreements (annual bonus payment, occupational pension scheme, savings incentives) including 30 days annual leave
• A family-friendly environment with flexible working hours (flextime) and the possibility of partial remote work
• Occupational health promotion services
• An extensive free training program and dedicated support for young researchers (https://uol.de/en/oltech)

Our standards:
The University of Oldenburg is dedicated to increase the percentage of female employees in the field of science. Therefore, female candidates are strongly encouraged to apply. In accordance to § 21 Section 3 NHG, female candidates with equal qualifications will be preferentially considered. Applicants with disabilities will be given preference in case of equal qualification.
Further information:
School II - Computing Science, Business Administration, Economics, and Law of the University of Oldenburg offers a modern, interdisciplinary academic environment in which technical, economic, and societal perspectives are brought together. Within this faculty, the Department of Computer Science stands for research-intensive and practice-oriented academic education.

The research group "Secure and Trustworthy Infrastructure" is embedded into the chair for Safety-Security-Interaction , which is a research and teaching-active group that is concerned with the development of theoretically sound technologies for maintaining the security of IT systems in the context of safety-critical systems and the Internet of Things. The main emphasis lies on developing security solutions tailored to the context-specific conditions in safety-critical systems, thereby giving special importance to studying the interaction between the security and the safety of the systems to be protected.

The opportunity for personal academic qualification (doctoral degree) is provided and explicitly supported!