Department of Quantitative Biomedicine, Medical Informatics

SNF PhD position in Medical Informatics with a Focus on Natural Language Processing, 100 %

Start of employment as soon as possible or upon agreement

We are looking for a PhD student for our SNF project ”Medical, Multilingual, and Privacy-Preserving Natural Language Processing (M2P2-NLP)”, passionate about working on medical problems and who helps us to create AI tools in the medical field, particularly in oncology and radiology.

Your responsibilities

You will be someone who loves to do research, design, and build novel AI models. You are used to working in a research environment. You will have experience in building and evaluating machine learning models, and preferably have knowledge and experience in the text and image processing domain.

You will join as an SNF PhD student to the Medical Language Technology group in the Krauthammer Lab at the University of Zurich and will have the opportunity to collaborate with multiple research teams at the Hospital University of Zurich and the University of Zurich.

In this position, you'll be working at the heart of our NLP Team, helping us work on the medical AI assistant tools for oncology and/or radiology. You will also help us create a high-quality AI system and take ownership of implementation. This would include the following:
  • Explore the state-of-the-art multi-modal multi-lingual Agentic AI models.
  • Design and implement Multi-modal Multi-lingual NLP algorithms and models.
  • Adapting "off-the-shelf" solutions for our research projects.
  • Contribute to a high-quality codebase, and develop tests where necessary.
  • Collaborate with other research fellows, especially with our SNF project team.
  • Develop and train large multimodal AI models for processing and discovery of medical data, especially on oncology data, and for information extraction from clinical notes, and text de-identification.
  • Present, write, and publish papers at conferences.

Your profile

Education:

M.Sc. in a related field or equivalent experience.

Experience:
  • At least +1 years of experience in computational sciences, including Machine Learning, computer sciences, computer vision, Computational Linguistics, and other relevant fields.
  • Expertise in large AI models, computational methods, data analysis, software and algorithm development, and modeling.
  • Ability to do original and outstanding research in computational sciences and its relevant field.
  • Ability to work well independently as well as in a collaborative team environment, in-person as well as via online channels.
  • Ability to handle multiple projects at the same time.
  • Ability to present research and other types of work, internally and externally.
  • Having coding skills in Python and passionate about the software development side of things!
  • Capable of building user-facing APIs that expose a range of NLP features as a service.
  • Having experience in using most modern frameworks for deep learning (PyTotch, Hugging Face) as well as for software development (Git, Linux) and GPU cluster (i.e., Slurm, Singularity).
  • The applicant must have native proficiency in the German language.

Preferred Experience in:
  • Medical NLP downstream tasks
  • Multi-modal Multi-lingual ML models and Agentic AI system
  • Knowledge about retrieval augmented generation (RAG)
  • Working at a hospital or within a healthcare
  • Working with sensitive data

Information on your application

The position is an SNF PhD, full-time position 80 % for 4 years. Please submit your CV with a publication list.

What we offer

Work-Life Balance
  • Flexible working models (such as part-time positions, mobile working, job-sharing)
  • Childcare at the kihz foundation of UZH and ETH
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Learning and Development
  • Wide range of continuing education courses of UZH and the Canton of Zurich
  • Language Center run jointly with ETH Zurich
More
Food
  • Food and drinks at reduced prices in the UZH cafeterias
  • Lunch-Check-card with UZH contribution
More
Healthcare
  • Special conditions on the Academic Sports Association ASVZ
  • Free seasonal flu vaccinations
  • Rest and relaxation at the quiet room in the university tower
More
Discounts
  • Private traffic: Carsharing, rent a vehicle, parking space
  • Digitalization: Hardware, software, mobile phone subscriptions
  • Special conditions on hotel reservations
More
Conditions of Employment
  • Policies of the UZH
  • Most UZH staff are employed according to public law
More
International Services
  • Support for people from outside Switzerland
More
Campuses
  • Campuses Zurich City, Zurich Irchel, Oerlikon and Schlieren
  • Sites Zurich West, Old Botanical Garden, Botanical Garden and Lengg
More

What we offer

Work-Life Balance
  • Flexible working models (such as part-time positions, mobile working, job-sharing)
  • Childcare at the kihz foundation of UZH and ETH


More
Learning and Development
  • Wide range of continuing education courses of UZH and the Canton of Zurich
  • Language Center run jointly with ETH Zurich

More
Food
  • Food and drinks at reduced prices in the UZH cafeterias
  • Lunch-Check-card with UZH contribution

More
Healthcare
  • Special conditions on the Academic Sports Association ASVZ
  • Free seasonal flu vaccinations
  • Rest and relaxation at the quiet room in the university tower

More
Discounts
  • Private traffic: Carsharing, rent a vehicle, parking space
  • Digitalization: Hardware, software, mobile phone subscriptions
  • Special conditions on hotel reservations

More
Conditions of Employment
  • Policies of the UZH
  • Most UZH staff are employed according to public law


More
International Services
  • Support for people from outside Switzerland

More
Campuses
  • Campuses Zurich City, Zurich Irchel, Oerlikon and Schlieren
  • Sites Zurich West, Old Botanical Garden, Botanical Garden and Lengg

More

Further information

Questions about the job

Farhad Nooralahzadeh
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Working at UZH
The University of Zurich, Switzerland's largest university, offers a range of attractive positions in various subject areas and professional fields. With around 10,000 employees and currently 12 professional apprenticeship streams the University offers an inspiring working environment on cutting-edge research and top-class education. Put your talent and skills to work with us. Find out more about UZH as an employer!
More → https://www.uzh.ch/cmsssl/en/explore/work.html

Please apply via our job portal www.jobs.uzh.ch

Working at UZH

The University of Zurich, Switzerland's largest university, offers a range of attractive positions in various subject areas and professional fields. With around 10,000 employees and currently 12 professional apprenticeship streams the University offers an inspiring working environment on cutting-edge research and top-class education. Put your talent and skills to work with us. Find out more about UZH as an employer! More
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