King's College London

About us

The Department of Informatics is looking to recruit a  Postdoctoral Research Associate (PDRA) to join the lab of Dr. David Watson in the Department of Informatics, based at Bush House in central London. 

The successful applicant will work on PRECISE-AI (Probabilistic Reasoning with Circuits for Safe and Explainable Artificial Intelligence), a research project funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council. King’s Department of Informatics is a large, interdisciplinary department with a vibrant research culture and long history of cutting-edge AI research. 

The postholder will benefit from access to King’s CREATE high-performance computing cluster, as well as mentoring and professional development opportunities provided by the King’s Centre for Research Staff Development. 

About the role

The PDRA will carry out research on probabilistic circuits (PCs) and tree-based machine learning methods for generative modelling, with a particular focus on responsible AI. The project builds on adversarial random forests (ARFs), an unsupervised learning framework developed by the PI that combines classification and regression trees with adversarial training to produce fast, flexible, and interpretable generative models that can be compiled into PCs for tractable probabilistic inference.

PRECISE-AI has three core objectives: (1) designing differentially private PC architectures that protect against membership inference attacks; (2) developing novel explainability methods that characterise model outputs in terms of necessary and sufficient conditions; and (3) building circuit-based auditing tools for causal fairness criteria. These pillars of responsible AI have been extensively studied in supervised learning but remain largely unexplored in the generative setting. Theoretical aims of the project include deriving statistical guarantees (e.g., minimax convergence) and computational tractability results (e.g., polytime complexity). PRECISE-AI will focus in the first instance on biomedical applications, using genomic and clinical data from large cohort studies on immune-mediated inflammatory diseases including psoriasis and rheumatoid arthritis.

The PDRA will lead on research across all three objectives, taking first authorship on associated publications and playing a central role in software development and dissemination. Target publication venues include NeurIPS, ICML, AAAI, and the Journal of Machine Learning Research. The postholder will collaborate with industry partners at Meta and academic collaborators at UCL and Cambridge. The PDRA will also have the opportunity to organise workshops at leading international conferences. The project will produce open-source software packages for Python and/or R, as well as user-friendly web applications aimed at practitioners across healthcare, finance, and industrial engineering.

This is a full- time post (35 hours/week), and you will be offered an a fixed term contract for 24 months ending no later than 30th June 2028.

Research staff at King’s are entitled to at least 10 days per year (pro-rata) for professional development. This entitlement, from the Concordat to Support the Career Development of Researchers, applies to Postdocs, Research Assistants, Research and Teaching Technicians, Teaching Fellows and AEP equivalent up to and including grade 7. Visit the Centre for Research Staff Development for more information.

About you

To be successful in this role, we are looking for candidates to have the following skills and experience:

Essential criteria

1.      PhD in AI, computer science, statistics, or a closely related discipline.

2.      A track record of publishing peer-reviewed AI/ML research in top venues.

3.      Proficiency in Python and/or R, including experience with relevant statistical computing libraries.

4.      Strong collaborative and teamwork skills, demonstrated through co-authored work, project involvement, or joint events.

5.      Excellent oral and written communication skills.

Desirable criteria

1.      Familiarity with probabilistic circuits and/or alternative approaches to probabilistic programming.

2.      Experience with differential privacy, XAI, and/or causal inference.

3.      Contributions to open-source software development, e.g. package submission to PyPI and/or CRAN.

4.      Experience organizing and contributing to academic workshops and seminars.

Downloading a copy of our Job Description

Full details of the role and the skills, knowledge and experience required can be found in the Job Description document, provided at the bottom of the page. This document will provide information of what criteria will be assessed at each stage of the recruitment process.

* Please note that this is a PhD level role but candidates who have submitted their thesis and are awaiting award of their PhDs will be considered. In these circumstances the appointment will be made at Grade 5, spine point 30 with the title of Research Assistant. Upon confirmation of the award of the PhD, the job title will become Research Associate and the salary will increase to Grade 6.

Further Information

At King’s, we believe that the diversity of our community and a culture that is welcoming, open, inclusive and collaborative, are great strengths of the university.

The Equality Act of 2010 protects the rights of our students and staff and provides a framework to fulfil our duties to eliminate unlawful discrimination, harassment and victimisation and in addition, to advance equality of opportunity and foster good relations between those who share a protected characteristic and those who do not. At times, this will include balancing rights and beliefs that can feel in tension.

We are committed to free speech and to academic freedom, believing that our foundational purpose as a university, is to create spaces where a wide range of ideas, including ideas that are controversial, can be discussed and debated, and where members of our community can express lawful views without fear of intimidation, harassment or discrimination.

When engaging in the robust exchange of ideas, we ask that our community is mindful of our Dignity at King’s guidance.

We ask all candidates to submit a copy of their CV, and a supporting statement, detailing how they meet the essential criteria listed in the person specification section of the job description. If we receive a strong field of candidates, we may use the desirable criteria to choose our final shortlist, so please include your evidence against these where possible.

We reserve the right to close adverts early due to the volume of applications we receive. While the closing date may change, all adverts will close at 23:59 to allow sufficient time for applications to be submitted on that day.

We encourage you to apply at the earliest opportunity to avoid disappointment as once we have closed a vacancy you will be unable to submit your application.

To find out how our managers will review your application, please take a look at our ‘ How we Recruit’ pages.