PhD position in causal inference

Vereniging voor Statistiek en Operations Research; Leersum; On-site; EUR 24,000 - 32,000; Full time

Job summary

Netherlands Society for Statistics and Operations Research invites applications for a PhD position in causal inference. You will join the Safe Causal Inference consortium and study how to deduce A causes B under explicit assumptions.

The project focuses on triangulation of performance assessment methods for conditional causal quantities, such as CATE estimators, using counterfactual outcomes, and addressing the assumption-dependence of evaluation.

Responsibilities

• Join the “Safe Causal Inference” consortium.
• Work on the subproject “Triangulation of performance assessment methods for conditional causal quantities.”
• Investigate how to reliably assess estimators of conditional causal effects (such as CATE estimators) using counterfactual outcomes, considering the causal assumptions underlying evaluation.

Job description

Netherlands Society for Statistics and Operations Research | Dutch

PhD position in causal inference

Application deadline is September 25. Start date is flexible, preferably before February 1st.

You will join the “Safe Causal Inference” consortium. Causal inference studies what assumptions are needed, and which methods you can use when those assumptions are met, to reliably conclude that “A causes B” and not just “A is correlated with B”.

You will work on the subproject “Triangulation of performance assessment methods for conditional causal quantities”. This PhD project investigates how to reliably assess the performance of estimators of conditional causal effects (such as CATE estimators and predictions under interventions). The core problem is that evaluating an estimator requires counterfactual outcomes in the evaluation dataset, but deriving those outcomes itself relies on causal assumptions, meaning the evaluation can be just as assumption-dependent as the estimator it’s meant to assess.