PhD student (Doctoral Researcher) in Behaviour Understanding for Healthcare Applications FM
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Job Location:
Martigny - Switzerland
Monthly Salary:
Not Disclosed
Posted on:
Yesterday
Vacancies:
1 Vacancy
Job Summary
Role Summary
ThePerception and Activity Understanding group at Idiap seeks a highly motivated PhD student to join an innovative FrenchSwiss SNSF project (AIMANT) focused on developing advanced social-AI models for behavior understanding in the context of autism early screening diagnosis and monitoring.
While significant progress has been made in activity and non-verbal behavior recognition current methods still struggle with adultchild interactions captured in (close to) naturalistic conditions such as those encountered in autism assessment sessions (ADOS ESCS). These challenges arise from the complexity and subtlety of the target behaviors including gesture- and attention-related cues (e.g. gaze pointing manipulation) infant micro-expressions and motor stereotypes.
This PhD project aims to develop next-generation multi-behavior coordination models (face and body gestures gaze audio semantics) with temporal interpretation at both the individual and interaction (childclinician) levels and as a key objective to leverage these multimodal behavioral models to derive robust and clinically meaningful ASD profile scores from video data.
The successful candidate will play a central role in addressing these challenges by contributing to model design developing innovative datasets and benchmarks and exploring cutting-edge machine learning strategies including multi-task learning unsupervised learning and model distillation to unify behavioral representations across behaviors and heterogeneous datasets.
Conditions:
The position is fully funded for four years contingent on satisfactory progress and will lead to a PhD dissertation. The selected candidate will be enrolled as a doctoral student at EPFL subject to acceptance by the Electrical Engineering Doctoral School (EDEE) ( anticipated start date is between June and September 2026. Salaries follow EPFL standards.
Your Profile
The ideal PhD candidate holds an MSc degree in computer science engineering physics or applied mathematics. A strong foundation in statistics linear algebra signal processing machine learning and programming is essential along with solid experience in deep learning.
We are looking for candidates with strong analytical skills excellent written and oral communication abilities and a clear interest in working with medical behavioral data to address impactful real-world challenges. The ability to work in a collaborative interdisciplinary environment with research and application partners is essential.
How to apply:
Please provide the following information as two separate pdf files:
- File 1: (i) updated CV (ii) grades from your Bachelor and Masters degrees. If you do not yet have your Masters diploma please send a certificate issued by your current institution of higher education that confirms your enrollment in a Masters program as well as current grades.
- File 2: (i) a personal motivation letter (max 2 pages); (ii) a sample of published work (Master thesis article) if available; (iii) reference letters (if available).
- Contact details of 3 reference persons.
Application deadline:
Screening of applications will begin on April 10th 2026 and will continue until the position is filled.
All queries related to the advertised position can be sent to Dr. Jean-Marc Odobez ().
About Idiap
Idiap is a research institute of national importance that engages in fundamental research education and technology transfer in artificial intelligence. Idiap offers competitive salaries and conditions in a dynamic multicultural environment.
Idiap is located in Martigny Valais a scenic region in the south of Switzerland surrounded by the highest mountains of Europe and offering exceptional quality of life exciting recreational activities including hiking climbing and skiing as well as varied cultural activities.
At Idiap we believe that diversity fosters creativity and innovation. We are committed to equality of opportunity to being fair and inclusive and to being a place where we all belong. If you believe that you could excel in this role but you are not sure you meet all the required criteria we very much welcome your application.
Required languages
- English - Level advanced
Réf: c7b9639d-7567-4da4-a193-9955c6382352
Required Experience:
IC
Key Skills
About Company
Artificial Intelligence for Society. The Idiap Research Institute is an independent, nonprofit research foundation affiliated with the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL). Its activities encompass basic research, training (graduate and post-graduate level), and technology ... View more
