PhD position in ML and game theory at Bosch Center for AI in Germany

[Philipp Geiger]

Hi! We are seeking a talented PhD student to work on theoretical and/or applied topics in the promising direction of machine learning combined with game theory at the Bosch Center for AI, near Stuttgart, Germany. More details follow below. We are looking forward to your application!

Quick links

• Full description and application: https://jobs.smartrecruiters.com/BoschGroup/743999702355826-phd-machine-learning-and-game-theory
• Lab -- Bosch Center for AI: http://bosch-ai.com
• Bosch-side supervisor -- Philipp Geiger: http://pgeiger.org

PhD Position Description

A combination of machine learning and multi-agent aspects lies at the core of a wide range of methods and theories that aim to address major societal challenges: from highly automated driving over shared mobility, urban congestion pricing and decentralized power generation to foundations in data-driven game-theoretic mechanism design.

The goal of this PhD thesis is to distill promising and general research questions from these areas, and answer them:

• Develop new models (model classes with good inductive biases for given tasks), algorithms, and/or theory (prove mathematical theorems etc.).
• Topics you could work on include, but are not limited to: machine learning algorithms that forecast demand (e.g., time series analysis and recurrent neural nets on urban traffic data); extension to data-driven game-theoretic models that also incorporate/reveal agents' preferences; transfer learning combined with game theory and mechanism design for decision making tasks (e.g. congestion pricing); adversarially-robust machine learning; and proving theorems that provide insights/guarantees about the aforementioned problems/models/algorithms.
• Code and evaluate your algorithms on relevant data sets and tasks.
• Publish papers at top-tier conferences (NIPS, ICML, AAMAS, UAI, etc.) and/or journals (JMLR etc.), develop a substantial understanding of the relevant existing work and keep close contact with the academic community.
• Benefit from being part of a leading AI industry research lab, the Bosch Center for Artificial Intelligence (BCAI). Participate in academic interactions within the BCAI research team and perform exclusively academic research with excellence (i.e. no industry project duties).

Qualifications

• Education: Excellent degree (Master) in mathematics, computer science, physics or similar
• Personality: Good communication and team work skills
• Working Practice: Structured, independently and inquisitive
• Experience and Knowledge: Very good math skills, good coding skills, familiar with machine learning; ideally: background in game theory and/or economics and prior experience in scientific writing
• Enthusiasm: A strong passion for doing top-level research, and a genuine interest in multi-agent/economic/social systems and how they can be improved using machine learning
• Languages: Very good in English written and spoken

Additional Information

The following publication is an example of our research in this direction: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1803.06247.pdf.

The final PhD topic is subject to the university-side supervisor. Duration: 3 years