Research Assistant or Postdoctoral Research Associate

Queen Mary University of London; London; On-site; GBP 125,000 - 150,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading academic institution in London seeks a Research Assistant or Postdoctoral Research Associate to work on evaluating and enhancing Large Language Models for real-world applications. This full-time role requires substantial knowledge in Natural Language Processing and machine learning, offering opportunities for personal and professional development. The position is fixed-term until March 2028, with a start date in Autumn 2025.

Benefits

Competitive salaries

Generous pension scheme

30 days' leave per annum

Flexible working arrangements

Qualifications

• Substantial knowledge of Natural Language Processing (NLP) and machine learning methods.
• Good understanding of work in LLM evaluation and fine-tuning.
• Experience in reasoning and explainability of NLP and ML models is desirable.

Responsibilities

• Develop methods for better evaluation of LLMs for real world scenarios.
• Augment LLMs with temporal reasoning and longitudinal predictions.
• Mitigate hallucinations and biases in LLM outputs.

Skills

Natural Language Processing (NLP)

Machine learning methods

Reasoning and explainability

Education

Undergraduate Degree in Computer Science or related

PhD in NLP or machine learning

Job description

Overview

We are pleased to offer a Research Assistant or Postdoctoral Research Associate post under the supervision of Prof Maria Liakata, in the context of the RAi UK/UKRI funded Keystone project on Addressing socio-technical limitations of Large Language Models (LLMs), particularly for medical and social computing (https://adsolve.github.io/).

The role involves developing methods for better evaluation of LLMs for real world scenarios, both reference-free and benchmark-based evaluation, augmenting LLMs with temporal reasoning and the ability to perform longitudinal predictions with multi-modal data, mitigation for hallucinations and biases. For details see the project website and in particular workstreams 2,3 and 5.

Responsibilities

• Develop methods for better evaluation of LLMs for real world scenarios (reference-free and benchmark-based).
• Augment LLMs with temporal reasoning and the ability to perform longitudinal predictions with multi-modal data.
• Mitigate hallucinations and biases in LLM outputs.
• Work on the project under the supervision of Prof Maria Liakata; align with workstreams 2, 3 and 5.

Qualifications

• For RA: Undergraduate Degree in Computer Science or a related topic.
• For PDRA: PhD in NLP or machine learning.
• Substantial knowledge of Natural Language Processing (NLP) and machine learning methods is essential.
• Good understanding of work in LLM evaluation and fine-tuning.
• Experience in reasoning and explainability of NLP and ML models is desirable.

About the School of Electronic Engineering and Computer Science (EECS)

Our researchers work with the arts and sciences collaborating with psychologists, biologists, musicians and actors, mathematicians, medical researchers, dentists and lawyers. As a multidisciplinary School, we are well known for our pioneering research and pride ourselves on our world-class projects. We are equal first in the UK for the impact of our Computer Science research, and second in the country for our Electronic Engineering research output (REF 2021).

About Queen Mary

Throughout our history, we have fostered social justice, improved lives through academic excellence, and we continuously embrace diversity of thought in everything we do. We believe that when views collide, disciplines interact, and perspectives intersect, truly original thought takes form.

Benefits and Details

We offer competitive salaries, access to a generous pension scheme, 30 days' leave per annum (pro-rata for part-time/fixed-term), a season ticket loan scheme and access to a comprehensive range of personal and professional development opportunities. In addition, we offer a range of work life balance and family friendly, inclusive employment policies, campus facilities and flexible working arrangements.

The post is based at the Mile End Campus in London. It is a full-time (35 hours per week) for PDRA, or full-time (35 hours) or part-time (20 hours) for RA, fixed term appointment until 31 March 2028 and is expected to start in Autumn 2025.

Queen Mary's commitment to our diverse and inclusive community is embedded in our appointments processes. Reasonable adjustments will be made at each stage of the recruitment process for any candidate with a disability. We are open to considering applications from candidates wishing to work flexibly.

Closing Date