Postdoctoral Researcher in Cognitive Science (3 years)

Popis:

For the full job posting, click on "Apply via external website". The Research Project This project investigates human-AI collaboration in decision-making from the perspective of dynamic emotional adaptation. The overarching goal is to improve collaboration outcomes and the quality of individual human decisions. As a researcher in this project, you will work on how theories of human affective processing can be implemented and tested in artificial agents. A central question is how systems consisting of a human and one or more artificial agents can communicate through bidirectional emotional signaling. For this to be possible, artificial agents must both be able to express and model emotions in ways that are meaningfully adapted to human affective processing. Research areas may include decisions based on personal preferences, such as purchasing a house; decisions and assessments within legal or other rule-based frameworks where procedural fairness is important; and decisions made under cognitive impairment or vulnerability, for example by elderly decision-makers. This project is part of the Agentic AI Research Group within WASP-HS (see below for a description of WASP-HS). The group focuses specifically on agentic AI: systems that have the capacity for increasingly autonomous planning, coordination, and action. It studies such systems not only as a societal and scientific challenge, but also as potential collaborators in the research itself. The work therefore revolves around human-AI collaboration, alignment, and the development of new research practices where autonomous AI systems can contribute to the generation, testing, and evaluation of knowledge. The postdoctoral researcher will be based at Lund University Cognitive Science and work in close collaboration with members of the Agentic AI Research Group. Current core members of the group are Christian Balkenius (LUCS), Annika Wallin (LUCS), Petter Johansson (LUCS), Lars Hall (LUCS), Daniel Västfjäll (Linköping University), Philip Pärnamets (Karolinska Institute), Anna Dreber (Stockholm School of Economics). Wallenberg AI, Autonomous Systems and Software Program – Humanity and Society (WASP-HS) is a national research program in Sweden. The vision of WASP-HS is to advance new interdisciplinary knowledge in the humanities and social sciences on AI and autonomous systems and their impact on human and societal development. WASP-HS enables pioneering research, expertise, and competence building in the humanities and social sciences. https://wasp-hs.org/ Duties and Responsibilities As a postdoctoral researcher, you will play a central role in developing and conducting research on emotionally capable LLMs and human-AI collaboration. You will work with the entire research process, including theory development, study design, data collection, statistical analysis, interpretation, and publication. You will design and conduct experiments on human interaction with artificial agents, contribute to modeling affective processes in AI systems, and investigate how emotional signaling can improve trust, collaboration, and decision quality in teams consisting of humans and AI. You will also contribute to connecting the project with current developments in agentic AI. This means you are expected to stay updated on research concerning LLM-based agents, prompting methods, fine-tuning strategies, and multi-agent systems, as well as assess how such methods can be incorporated into the project's empirical and theoretical work. The position is therefore particularly well-suited for a candidate who wants to combine strong experimental research skills with active engagement in emerging AI methods. Qualifications Requirements for the position: A PhD or equivalent foreign degree in cognitive science, psychology, affective neuroscience, human-computer interaction, or a related field. The PhD must be completed by the time the employment decision is made, and as an applicant you must complete your application with documentation proving completion of the PhD before this deadline. Strong ability to develop and conduct high-quality research. Pedagogical ability. You must not have previously been employed as a postdoctoral researcher with the support of applicable collective agreements for more than one year in the same or a related field at Lund University. Very good knowledge of English. Solid understanding of central theories in affective science and social cognition (e.g., appraisal theories, basic and complex emotions, cognitive and affective empathy, shared intentionality, emotion regulation). Documented interest in, or previous work on, emotional capabilities of LLMs or other AI systems. Programming skills in Python sufficient for experimental work and data analysis. Meritorious for the position: Completed PhD no more than three years before the final application deadline. If there are special reasons such as illness, parental leave, union positions, military service, or service/assignments relevant to the field, this time can be deducted from the time elapsed since completion of the PhD. Experience building or fine-tuning LLMs, for example through prompt engineering, LoRA (Low-Rank Adaptation), RLHF (Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback), or full fine-tuning. Documented knowledge of affective computing or biologically inspired emotion models. Previous work with multi-agent simulations with LLMs of social behavior or social dilemmas. Knowledge of reinforcement learning applied to language agents or emotional decision-making. Competence in advanced prompting techniques (Chain-of-Thought, Tree-of-Thought, self-consistency, emotion-conditioned generation, and related techniques). Documented experience with interdisciplinary collaboration between cognitive science/psychology and AI/ML teams.

Přehled

Typ

job

Stav

active

Viditelnost

public

Město

Lund

Adresa

Box 192

GPS

55.7205201, 13.1642678kopírovatotevřít v ▾

Email

[email protected]

Telefon

046-2220000

Zobrazení

4

Publikováno

24. 4. 2026

Upraveno

21. 6. 2026

Parametry