Postdoctoral Research Fellowship Position in Uncertainty Quantification in LLMs

Overview of the Role

By scaling up data, compute and model size, large language models (LLMs) have gained an impressive and ever growing array of capabilities. The next phase of development will be dominated by the use of LLMs in real world scenarios, and improving LLM reliability will be a crucial and exciting component of this next phase.

A postdoctoral research fellow position is available in a joint project across Oxford (Prof Yee Whye TEH), Nanyang Technological University (Prof Luke Ong) and National University of Singapore (Prof Wee Sun Lee) studying the reliability of LLMs through the lens of uncertainty quantification (UQ), Bayesian inference, conformal prediction, and world models.

Along with industrial and government partners, the postholder and project team will use these methods to address current issues with LLMs, such as reward hacking, active learning and testing of LLMs.

Reporting to Prof Luke Ong, the postholder will be a member of his research group in the College of Computing and Data Science, NTU, with responsibility for leading and carrying out research pertinent to the project, as well as day-to-day management of research activities relevant to the project, e.g. weekly meetings, reading clubs, seminars, etc.

Responsibilities and Duties

• Manage own academic research and administrative activities. This involves small scale project management, to co-ordinate multiple aspects of the work to meet deadlines.
• Develop independent research questions, propose new methodologies to improve on existing methods and contribute ideas for collaborative research projects.
• Assist the PI in mentoring, supervising and coordinating the activities of junior researchers and students of the research project.
• Lead small teams of students, software engineers, research assistants and other junior researchers to formulate and address research questions within the purview of the project; and assist the PI in mentoring and supervising them.
• Act as a source of information and advice to other members of the research team.
• Publish and present papers at conferences or public meetings.
• Work with industry and government partners to understand their research needs and formulate solutions.
• Contribute to outreach, communications and reporting as required to funders and stakeholders. Represent the research group at external meetings/seminars, either with other members of the group or alone.
• Help organise and actively participate in regular meetings and seminars within the group.
• Assist in raising research funds through grant applications.
• Carry out some related teaching and other works for the College that takes into account their career aspirations and development goals.

Selection Criteria

Applicants should be close to completion or hold a relevant PhD with post-qualification research experience in the areas of statistical machine learning, deep learning and large language models.

The ideal candidate for these positions

• Should have a track record of excellent publications in statistical ML, Deep Learning and LLMs.
• Should be interested in mentoring masters and PhDs on several research projects.
• Should have a demonstrated ability to initiate new research projects and have a desire to lead a research team.

Applications and Enquiries

If you are interested, please send your CV and a brief cover letter to Prof Luke Ong (Email: luke.ong @ ntu . edu . sg).

To apply, click the red APPLY button on the webpage Research Fellow (Uncertainty Quantification in LLMs). Please also email a copy of your application to the PI, Luke Ong (Email: luke.ong @ ntu . edu . sg).

This call was posted in January 2025. It will remain open until the position is filled. Only shortlisted candidates will be notified.