Doctoral Student in Human-in-the-Loop Autonomous Systems

Chalmers University of Technology; Göteborgs kommun; On-site; SEK 363,000 - 435,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Employee benefits

Gothenburg location

Collaborative research environment

Job summary

Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg invites five motivated Doctoral students to help design the next generation of human-in-the-loop autonomous systems at the Division of Interaction Design and Software Engineering.

You will be supervised by Associate Professor Rebekka Wohlrab and collaborate with other Doctoral students and postdocs while pursuing advanced courses and contributing to research about safer, more usable software for healthcare, transportation, and smart systems.

Qualifications

• Master's degree in Computer Science or related field required.
• Strong research interests in software engineering or formal methods.
• Excellent English communication, written and spoken.
• Equivalent knowledge considered (e.g., 4-year Bachelor's) for eligibility.

Responsibilities

• Research and develop theoretical foundations, methods, models, and tools for human-in-the-loop autonomous systems.
• Evaluate contributions using rigorous empirical methods in lab and with industry collaborators.
• Publish research papers and present findings at top venues.
• Take advanced courses within the Graduate School of Computer Science and Engineering.
• Teach at undergraduate level or perform other duties totaling 20% of working hours.

Education

Master's degree (120 credits) in Computer Science or related field

Master’s degree (magisterexamen) 60 credits in Computer Science or related field

Strong research track record in software engineering/formal methods

Excellent English communication

Equivalent knowledge considered (e.g., 4-year Bachelor's)

Job description

We are looking for 5 motivated Doctoral students to help design the next generation of human-in-the-loop autonomous systems at the Division of Interaction Design and Software Engineering. You will contribute to a future in which we can rely on better robots, autonomous networks, and other smart systems – impacting domains such as healthcare, transportation, and other areas of our society. These systems are often software-intensive and we develop mechanisms to create better software for safer, more secure, and more usable systems. You will be supervised by Associate Prof. Rebekka Wohlrab, whose research focuses on human-centered software engineering and self-adaptive systems. She is currently building up a team of more than 10 people. It will allow you to be part of a fun environment where you can collaborate with other Doctoral students and postdocs working on similar topics.

About Us

The Department of Computer Science and Engineering, a joint department of Chalmers and the University of Gothenburg, spans the breadth of computing disciplines. Our internationally visible research, strong industry links and diverse environment create a collaborative setting where ideas grow into real impact. At the Division of Interaction Design and Software Engineering, we design smarter ways to engineer better software, and explore how people engage with digital systems, combining global research perspectives with strong collaboration with industry.

About The Research Projects

• Expectations project. The aim is to make autonomous systems aware of the expectations of their end users. Today, autonomous systems are not aware of what humans expect - even though such awareness could enable them to behave in ways that better align with user expectations or provide meaningful explanations when unexpected situations arise. We plan to represent and model expectations using formal methods, develop techniques that help a system reason about human expectations at runtime, and evaluate the contributions using simulations and experiments with physical robots. For this project, you need to be comfortable with mathematics and hold a degree in Computer Science, Applied Mathematics, or a related field. It is an advantage if you have experience with probability theory, reinforcement learning, or Markov Decision Processes. Coursework or project experience in multi-agent systems, reinforcement learning, and/or probability theory will strengthen your application.
• Self-adaptation project. The goal is to design solutions that enable adaptive coordination between teams of humans and autonomous systems. Today, coordination between humans and autonomous systems is often hard-coded, despite the fact that real-world situations frequently require different team compositions, communication structures, or varying degrees of centralization and decentralization. The project aims to enable adaptive coordination, especially in contexts where multiple humans and multiple autonomous systems are involved. Runtime models (e.g., behavior trees or state machines) will be used to support adaptive coordination and increase the flexibility of coordination mechanisms. You will design software architecture solutions for adaptive coordination, develop software prototypes, and run experiments to evaluate them. Depending on your interests, one relevant research direction is cybersecurity in human-machine teaming contexts, including how teams should respond when an autonomous system behaves suspiciously or may have been compromised by an attack. For this project, you need to be comfortable with self-adaptive systems and software architecture, and have a degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or a related field.

The projects are partially supported by the Swedish Research Council (VR), the Swedish Foundation for Strategic Research (SSF), and Wallenberg AI, Autonomous Systems and Software Program (WASP). WASP is Sweden’s largest individual research program ever, a major national initiative for strategically motivated basic research, education and faculty recruitment. The program addresses research on artificial intelligence and autonomous systems acting in collaboration with humans, adapting to their environment through sensors, information and knowledge, and forming intelligent systems-of-systems. The vision of WASP is excellent research and competence in artificial intelligence, autonomous systems and software for the benefit of Swedish society and industry. Read more: https://wasp-sweden.org/

Read more: https://wasp-sweden.org/graduate-school

Who We Are Looking For

The following requirements are mandatory:

• To qualify as a Doctoral student, you must have a Master's degree (masterexamen) of 120 credits or a Master’s degree (magisterexamen) of 60 credits* in Computer Science or a related field
• A well-documented track record of research interests and achievements in software engineering, formal methods, or a related field
• You are highly motivated, energetic, independent, and have well-developed analytical problem-solving ability
• Your communication skills in English (written and oral) are of a high quality
• If you have acquired substantially equivalent knowledge in some other way, you may also qualify. For instance, a 4-year Bachelor’s degree is accepted.

The Following Experience Will Strengthen Your Application

• Published papers in peer-reviewed conferences, journals, or workshops

What You Will Do

• Research and develop theoretical foundations, methods, models, and tools for human-in-the-loop autonomous systems
• Evaluate those contributions using rigorous empirical methods, both in the lab and potentially in industrial contexts (e.g., with our existing collaborators Volvo Group and Ericsson)
• Publish research papers and present your research in top venues
• Take courses at an advanced level within the Graduate school of Computer Science and Engineering.
• Teach on Chalmers' undergraduate level or perform other duties corresponding to 20 percent of working hours.

Contract terms

• The Doctoral student positions are fully funded from start.
• The position is a fixed-term appointment of five years (with 20% teaching or other departmental duties).
• A starting salary of 35,725 SEK per month (valid from May 1, 2026), with an increase of 5000 SEK per month after 2 years.
• Doctoral studies require physical presence throughout the entire study period. A valid residence permit must be presented by the study start date; otherwise the admission may be withdrawn.

What We Offer

• As a Doctoral student at Chalmers, you are an employee and enjoy all employee benefits. Read more about working at Chalmers and ourbenefitsfor employees.
• A dynamic and inspiring working environment in the coastal city of Gothenburg.
• Read more about Sweden’s generous parental leave, subsidized day care, free schools, healthcare etc at Move To Gothenburg.

Chalmers is dedicated to improving gender balance and actively works with equality projects, such as the GENIE Initiative for gender equality and excellence. We celebrate diversity and consider equality and inclusion as fundamental aspects of all our activities.

If Swedish is not your native language, Chalmers offers Swedish courses to help you settle in.

Find more general information about doctoral studies at Chalmers here.

Application deadline: October 15, 2026