ETH AI Center Doctoral Fellowships

The ETH AI Center offers a unique fellowship program for doctoral students, designed to foster interdisciplinary collaboration and a positive impact on society.

The ETH AI Center promotes trustworthy, accessible, and inclusive AI systems. For this goal, we bring together interdisciplinary research teams of AI foundations, applications, and implications across all departments and look at AI from many different angles like mathematical principles, medicine, architecture, robotics, and social sciences / future of work. We enable research of high quality, industry innovation, and AI entrepreneurship.

About AI Center fellowships

The ETH AI Center faculty comprises more than 110 professorships representing all sixteen departments of ETH Zurich and five external research groups (from the University of Zurich and the University of St. Gallen). The ETH AI Center Fellowship program is one of Europe’s premier Post-Doc programs focused on advancing interdisciplinary AI research. This can be inside AI foundations or between AI foundations and application areas. Fellows work with two excellent PIs from different fields and carry equal weights in the supervision.

Your mission

Within the doctoral fellowship program you will conduct research that impacts the future of AI. You will be working on your own project (that you will propose) and continuously have the opportunity to exchange with other teams and professorships, participate at faculty retreats, symposia, summits etc. Fellows have their primary office at the ETH AI Center and enjoy excellent employment conditions. The center offers plenty of opportunities to strengthen your career path through an optional entrepreneurial or industry track that provides valuable hands-on experience to turn your research into practical impact.

What we offer

We offer 5 to 8 doctoral positions with flexible start dates, usually in September.

• Transparent salary: CHF 72,800 in the first year, CHF 78,000 in the second year, and CHF 83,200 in the third year. The advancements are automatic. The positions are remunerated according to a rate 5 doctoral position at 100% level.
• Co-mentorship by two excellent PIs of different fields
• Training and continuing education activities
• Services and offerings to support work and family life  

Requirements

• You are expected to have completed or be close to completing a Master’s degree in computer science, machine learning, statistics, physics, engineering, applied mathematics, or other relevant fields or are close to completion.
• You have an excellent track record and must meet the general admission requirements for a doctorate at ETH Zurich (available at https://www.ethz.ch/en/doctorate.html).
• Your level of English allows you to discuss your topics with your colleagues and report your findings in writing.
• You look forward to working with an interdisciplinary team that longs to find solutions together.

Applications are encouraged from candidates with a keen interest in researching interdisciplinary AI topics. Each recipient of an ETH AI Center Fellowship will have the opportunity from two mentors from different fields and often different departments envisaged to carry equal weights in supervision. In the application form, candidates can provide preferences for specific mentors and also have to select interest areas in AI foundations and application areas to get a better understanding of a potential research direction.

Candidates select interest areas in AI foundations (AI theory, foundations, methods, and systems) including but not limited to:

• Mathematical or statistical foundations of ML, AI, and Data Science
• Interpretability and explainability
• Safety, reliability, and robustness
• Fairness and bias of AI Systems
• Computer vision
• Natural language understanding
• Reinforcement learning and data-driven control
• Neuroscientific foundations
• AI edge and networked computing
• Privacy-preserving AI systems
• AI system design & engineering
• Human-computer interaction

In addition, they select interested AI application areas including but not limited to: 

• AI for healthcare and medical
• AI for social good
• AI in architecture and construction
• AI in education
• AI in environment and sustainability
• AI in finance and economics
• AI in industrial and manufacturing
• AI in science and engineering
• Augmented reality and human-centered AI
• Computational biology
• Computational social science
• Future of work, ethics, social, and policy implications
• Interdisciplinary collaboration on foundations of data science
• Robotics and autonomous systems
• Smart cities and mobility
• Space research and exploration

Guidelines & Process

Before applying, please read carefully our official guidelines for the ETH AI Center Doctoral Fellowship (PDF, 97 KB) and visit our FAQs. Applications for the 2025 doctoral fellowship cohort are open until 19 November 2024. Please note that we exclusively accept applications submitted through our online application portal. Applications via email or postal services will not be considered.

More detailed information on the application process can be found on the guidelines page which also contains a list of the faculty member and their research interests.