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Turing Lead, Adrian Weller, received a grant as Co-Investigator (Co-I) to be part of the EU Horizon European Lighthouse on Secure and Safe AI project (‘ELSA’). The goal of ELSA is to create a European virtual centre of excellence for safe and secure AI that will address major challenges hampering the deployment of AI technologies. Research will focus on “technical robustness and safety”, “privacy preserving techniques and infrastructures” and “human agency and oversight”.

Efforts to detect, prevent, and mitigate threats and enable recovery from harm focus on 3 grand challenges:

1. Robustness guarantees and certification
2. Private and robust collaborative learning at scale
3. Human-in-the-loop decision making: Integrated governance to ensure meaningful oversight

which cut across 6 use cases: health, autonomous driving, robotics, cybersecurity, multimedia, and document intelligence.

ELSA will focus on machine-learning-based methods and especially deep learning, which form the foundation for many modern AI applications. Throughout the project, robust technical approaches will be integrated with legal and ethical principles supported by meaningful and effective governance architectures to nurture and sustain the development and deployment of AI technology that serves and promotes foundational European values.

This project builds on and expands the internationally recognized network of excellence ELLIS, the European Laboratory for Learning and Intelligent Systems. ELLIS is made up of a network of over 100 organizations and more than 300 ELLIS Fellows and Scholars (113 ERC grants) committed to shared standards of excellence.

For more details about the project, please see elsa: European Lighthouse on Secure and Safe AI (elsa-ai.eu).

ROLE PURPOSE

The Turing are hiring a Senior Research Associate to support and enable the delivery of parts of the ELSA project for which Turing will be funded. The successful candidate will work with the Programme Director, Adrian Weller at the Turing and the other ELSA project partners.

The role will develop new theory, methods and tools to help enable the secure and safe development and deployment of AI systems. An area of focus will be reliable tools for AI assurance to help monitor and enforce desired properties of systems in the context of ELSA project use cases, coordinating with legal expert Co-Investigators on the project, and partners to help develop technical solutions to ethical governance challenges raised. Work we will advance includes developing robust measures of transparency for fairness, incorporating methods to ensure appropriate privacy is preserved, and exploring scalable approaches to incorporating human knowledge and priors in the loop for effective human-machine team decisions.

Research work will focus on understanding the potential and limits of third-party certification mechanisms in establishing AI assurance as well as on investigating the integration of technical methods with legal and ethical regimes to ensure that the design and deployment of AI systems will serve legal and ethical value.

In line with the focus and components of the project, the candidate is expected to have professional experience that provides suitable foundations for understanding technical as well as governance related aspects concerning the design, development and use of AI technologies, including ethical and regulatory considerations. They are expected to have a strong interest in existing and emerging legal and regulatory frameworks and requirements with relevance to AI technologies at the national and international level.

For the reason above, we welcome applications from candidates with expertise in any of the following: Mathematics, Computer Science, as well as Law, Ethics or Policy.

Within transparency, the primary focus is interpretability of the outputs of machine learning systems which will be directly beneficial for practitioners, stakeholders or regulators; though we shall also consider broader issues, such as the process of how data and humans fit into decision pipelines.

The candidate will join a vibrant team of researchers and will have opportunities to engage with cutting-edge projects and experts at leading universities. These include Karen Yeung (Birmingham), and project teams funded by other Turing strategic partnerships.

DUTIES AND AREAS OF RESPONSIBILITY

General duties for Senior Research Associate posts:

• Provide technical project management and leadership for research projects, ensuring successful outcomes
• Define the research direction in collaboration with Principal Investigators (PIs).
• Be a point of contact, supporting PIs in engaging with stakeholders regarding projects and deputising in meetings where necessary.
• Take the lead on writing up findings as they emerge, producing and developing reports, and developing publications in peer reviewed journals, in collaboration with the research team.
• Present, disseminate and explain our work at meetings/events and contribute to both the internal and external visibility of the Institute.
• Take responsibility for driving collaboration with academic experts and broader research partners from across the Turing, and the wider Turing /project community.

Specific to the project/programme role

• Play a leading role in undertaking high-quality independent research, actively contributing, and steering to the broader research aims of the Safe and Ethical AI Programme
• Develop and apply state-of-the-art approaches for fairness, transparency, robustness and/or privacy to tackle real-world-inspired research challenges of the ELSA project. These might include:

1. Robust methods for practically useful transparency, examining the extent of leakage of private information
2. Appropriate methods to monitor and mitigate bias and unfairness
3. Ways to improve practical human-machine team performance
4. Formal verification and validation

• A PhD (or equivalent experience and/or qualifications) in any of the following relevant areas: Policy, Law, Ethics, Mathematics, Computer Science or a closely related discipline
• A solid background in one or more of the following: technical approaches to fairness, transparency, robustness or privacy; probabilistic models; human-machine teams
• Experience in design, development and implementation of research software tools and libraries, such as Python, Java, GPU programming (Tensorflow, PyTorch, etc), symbolic verification (SAT, SMT)
• Track record of the ability to initiate, develop and deliver high quality research aligned with the research strategy indicated by the PI and any industrial stakeholders and to publish in leading journals and conferences.
• Hands-on experience with Machine Learning methods
• Substantial research experience in their field of expertise with commensurate output
• Evidence of high-quality publication(s) in a relevant field commensurate with your career stage

APPLICATION PROCEDURE

If you are interested in this opportunity, please click the apply button below. You will need to register on the applicant portal and complete the application form including your CV and covering letter. If you have questions about the role or would like to apply using a different format, please contact us on 020 3862 3536 or email [email protected].

If you have questions about the role or would like to apply using a different format, please contact us on 020 3862 3536 or email [email protected].

If you are applying for more than one role at the Turing, please note that only one Cover Letter can be visible on your profile at one time. If you wish to apply for multiple roles and do not want to overwrite your existing Cover Letter, please apply for the role using the button below and forward your additional cover letter directly to [email protected] quoting the job title.

CLOSING DATE FOR APPLICATIONS: SUNDAY 08 SEPTEMBER 2024 AT 23:59 (LONDON UK BST)

We reserve the right to close this vacancy early or to interview suitable candidates before the closing date if enough applications are received.

TERMS AND CONDITIONS

This full-time post is offered on a fixed term basis until September 2025. The annual salary is £55,184 - £56,779 plus excellent benefits, including flexible working and family friendly policies, https://www.turing.ac.uk/work-turing/why-work-turing/employee-benefits

The Alan Turing Institute is based at the British Library, in the heart of London’s Knowledge Quarter. We expect staff to come to our office at least 4 days per month. Some roles may require more days in the office; the hiring manager will be able to confirm this during the interview.

EQUALITY, DIVERSITY AND INCLUSION

The Alan Turing Institute is committed to creating an environment where diversity is valued and everyone is treated fairly.In accordance with the Equality Act, we welcome applications from anyone who meets the specific criteria of the post regardless of age, disability, ethnicity, gender reassignment, marital or civil partnership status, pregnancy and maternity, religion or belief, sex and sexual orientation.

We are committed to making sure our recruitment process is accessible and inclusive. This includes making reasonable adjustments for candidates who have a disability or long-term condition. Please contact us at [email protected] to find out how we can assist you.

Please note all offers of employment are subject to obtaining and retaining the right to work in the UK and satisfactory pre-employment security screening which includes a DBS Check.

Full details on the pre-employment screening process can be requested from [email protected].