PhD Researcher in Speech & Audio Watermarking & Detection

Aalto University; Finland; Hybrid; EUR 32,000 - 38,000; Full time

Job summary

Aalto University in Espoo, Finland, invites applications for a Doctoral Researcher in Speech and Language Technology within the COWAMA project. The role focuses on detecting AI-generated audio content and watermarking methods, creating diverse datasets, and advancing robust detection and attribution techniques.

You will work under the supervision of Prof. Lauri Juvela in a hybrid setup at the Otaniemi Campus, starting January 2027 or later, with a strong emphasis on open science, collaboration

Qualifications

• Master’s degree or near completion in speech or audio processing, ML, signal processing, computer science, electrical engineering, or a related field.
• Strong interest in doctoral research on audio deepfake detection, watermarking, source tracing, and generative AI.
• Good programming skills, preferably including Python and modern machine learning tools.
• Fluency in English is required. Finnish language is not required.

Responsibilities

• Developing methods for detecting the authenticity and origin of speech and audio content generated by multiple models and containing different watermarking methods.
• Creating datasets of diverse real and generated speech and audio from different generative models and watermarking methods.
• Adapting and improving detector baselines for multi-objective detection involving deepfake detection, content origin detection, and watermark identification.
• Developing explainable and localized detection methods for watermark and deepfake attribution, especially when generated content is mixed with other audio sources.
• Studying robustness against signal-processing attacks, generative resynthesis attacks, adversarial attacks, and realistic downstream processing such as mixing.
• Publishing research in leading journals and conferences in speech, audio, and machine learning, and contributing to open-source releases of software, trained models, and reproducible research outputs.

Skills

Python

English fluency

Deep learning basics

Signal processing basics

Independent work

Education

Master’s degree (or near completion) in speech/audio processing, ML, signal processing, CS, EE, or related field

Job description

Aalto University in Espoo, Finland, invites applications for a Doctoral Researcher in Speech and Language Technology within the COWAMA project. The role focuses on detecting AI-generated audio content and watermarking methods, creating diverse datasets, and advancing robust detection and attribution techniques.

You will work under the supervision of Prof. Lauri Juvela in a hybrid setup at the Otaniemi Campus, starting January 2027 or later, with a strong emphasis on open science, collaboration