ETH AI Center Doctoral Fellowships

The ETH AI Center promotes trustworthy, accessible, and inclusive AI systems. For this goal, we bring together interdisciplinary research teams of AI foundations, applications, and implications across all departments and look at AI from many different angles like mathematical principles, medicine, architecture, robotics, and social sciences / future of work. We enable research of high quality, industry innovation, and AI entrepreneurship.

About AI Center fellowships

The ETH AI Center faculty comprises more than 120 professorships representing all sixteen departments of ETH Zurich and five external research groups (from University of Zurich and University of St. Gallen). The ETH AI Center Fellowship program is one of Europe’s premier PhD programs focused on advancing interdisciplinary AI research. This can be inside AI foundations or between AI foundations and application areas. Fellows work with two excellent PIs from different fields who carry equal weight in supervision.

Your mission

Within the doctoral fellowship program you will conduct research that impacts the future of AI. You will be working on your own project (that you will propose) and continuously have the opportunity to exchange with other teams and professorships, participate at faculty retreats, symposia, summits etc. Fellows have their primary office at the ETH AI Center and enjoy excellent employment conditions. The center offers plenty of opportunities to strengthen your career path through an optional entrepreneurial or industry track that provides you with valuable hands-on experience to turn your research into practical impact.

What we offer

We offer 5 to 8 doctoral positions with flexible start dates, usually in September.

• Transparent salary with automatic advancement. The positions are remunerated according to a rate 5 doctoral position at 100% level. 
  • CHF 73,100 in the first year
  • CHF 78,300 in the second year
  • CHF 83,500 in the third year. 
• Co-mentorship by two excellent PIs of different fields
• Training and continuing education activities
• Services and offerings to support work and family life  

Requirements

• You are expected to have completed or be close to completing a Master’s degree in computer science, machine learning, statistics, physics, engineering, applied mathematics, or other relevant fields or are close to completion.
• You have an excellent track record and must meet the general admission requirements for a doctorate at ETH Zurich (available at https://www.ethz.ch/en/doctorate.html).
• Your level of English allows you to discuss your topics with your colleagues and report your findings in writing.
• You look forward to working with an interdisciplinary team that longs to find solutions together.

Topics

Applications are encouraged from candidates with a keen interest in doing research on interdisciplinary AI topics. Each recipient of an ETH AI Center Fellowship will have the opportunity from two mentors from different fields and often different departments that will carry equal weight in supervision. In the application form, candidates can provide preferences for specific mentors and also have to select interest areas in AI foundations and application areas to get a better understanding of a potential research direction.

Candidates select interest areas in AI foundations (AI theory, foundations, methods, and systems) including but not limited to:

• Mathematical or statistical foundations of ML AI, and Data Science
  • Subtopic: Foundational AI for Linear Algebra (supported by IBM Research)
• AI System Design, Engineering & Hardware
• Agents & Human-AI Collaboration
  • Sub topic: AI Agents for Data Integration (supported by IBM Research)
• Computer Vision & Machine Perception
  • Sub topic: 3D Representation Learning for Physics-Based Simulation (supported by IBM Research)
  • Sub topic: Ultra-compact Visual Language Models (supported by IBM Research)
• Trustworthy AI Systems
• Foundation Models
• Security & privacy
• LLMs and Natural Language Understanding
• Reinforcement Learning and Data-driven Control
• Safety, Reliability, and Robustness

In addition they select interested AI application areas including but not limited to: 

• AI for Quantum Computing (supported by IBM Research)
• AI for Healthcare & Medical
• AI for Education
• AI for Energy Systems, Climate Modeling & Environment
• AI for Finance & Economics
• AI for Industrial & Manufacturing
• AI for Sciences & Engineering
  • Sub topic: 3D Representation Learning for Physics-Based Simulation (supported by IBM Research)
• AI for Space Research & Exploration
• AI for Robotics & Autonomous Systems
  • Sub topic: 3D Representation Learning for Physics-Based Simulation (supported by IBM Research)
• AI for Augmented Reality & Human-Centered AI
• Interdisciplinary collaboration on foundations of data science
  • Sub topic: AI Agents for Data Integration (supported by IBM Research)

Guidelines & Process

Before applying, please read carefully our Download official guidelines for the ETH AI Center Doctoral Fellowship (PDF, 138 KB) and visit our FAQs. Please note that we exclusively accept applications submitted through our online application portal. Applications via email or postal services will not be considered.

More detailed information on the application process can be found on the guidelines page which also contains a list of the faculty member and their research interests.