Postdoctoral Research Associate, Informatics

KINGS COLLEGE LONDON, United Kingdom

Updated: 24 minutes ago
Location: London, ENGLAND
Job Type: FullTime
Deadline: 20 Jul 2025

About us

The Department of Informatics is looking to recruit a Postdoctoral Research Associate.

We are a globally recognised center of excellence in artificial intelligence, robotics, and computer vision research. The department fosters interdisciplinary collaboration, addressing real-world challenges through innovative machine learning, data science, and intelligent systems research.

About the role

Applications are invited for a Research Fellow position on the UKRI-funded Turing AI Fellowship project ‘Event-Centric Framework for Natural Language Understanding’ led by Prof. Yulan He. The 5-year project aims to develop a knowledge-aware and event-centric framework for natural language understanding, in which event graphs are built as reading progresses; event representations are learned with the incorporation of background knowledge; implicit knowledge is derived by performing reasoning over event graphs; and the comprehension model is developed with built-in interpretability and robustness against adversarial attacks. 

There will be three research fellows appointed in different stages of the project. For this post, the successful candidate will primarily focus on developing LLM agents to support effective theory of mind reasoning and for cognitive reappraisal. They will join the wider network of  Turing AI fellows  and the  Alan Turing Institute , the national AI and Data Science institute in the UK. There will be opportunities to develop research profile, to travel to give demos and presentations, and to write academic papers.

Candidates should hold a PhD degree in Computer Science or other relevant discipline. The successful candidate will possess skills in natural language processing and deep learning. Experience of studying the robustness and generalisability of LLM would be beneficial.  

This is a full time post (35 hours per week), and you will be offered an a fixed term contract until 31st March, 2026.

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

  • PhD in Natural Language Processing (NLP), Artificial Intelligence or a very closely related discipline.
  • Strong research record in NLP as evidenced by publications in high quality journals and conferences.
  • Strong expertise in large language models (LLMs) and natural language processing, including experience with LLM agentic frameworks.
  • Good effective communication (both oral and written) skills.
  • Ability to write research reports and papers accessible to both academic and lay audiences.
  • Ability to initiate, plan, organise, implement and deliver programmes of work to tight deadlines.

    • Desirable criteria

  • Track record of interdisciplinary collaboration.
  • Familiarity with cognitive architectures or agent-based modelling frameworks.
  • Ability or potential to contribute to the development of funding proposals in order to generate external funding to support research projects.

    • 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

    We pride ourselves on being inclusive and welcoming. We embrace diversity and want everyone to feel that they belong and are connected to others in our community.

    We are committed to working with our staff and unions on these and other issues, to continue to support our people and to develop a diverse and inclusive culture at King's.

    As part of this commitment to equality, diversity and inclusion and through this appointment process, it is our aim to develop candidate pools that include applicants from all backgrounds and communities.

    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 advert. 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.

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

    Grade and Salary: £44,355 - £46,671 per annum, including London Weighting Aloowance
    Job ID: 119808
    Close Date: 20-Jul-2025
    Contact Person: Professor Yulan He
    Contact Details: yulan.he@kcl.ac.uk


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