[Hiring] Launching CRISTAL Lab @ CISPA - Open Roles!

[Cristina Garbacea]

Hi everyone,

I am very excited to share that starting September 1st, I will be joining the CISPA Helmholtz Center for Information Security in Germany as Tenure-Track Faculty & Chief Scientist. There, I am officially launching the 💎 CRISTAL Lab (Communication, Reasoning, Intelligence & Safety for Trustworthy ALignment)!

As part of this launch, I am actively recruiting fully funded PhD Students, Postdoctoral Researchers, and Research Interns (BSc/MSc/PhD) to join our founding team. Applications are reviewed on a rolling basis with flexible start dates from Fall 2026 onward. You can explore our mission and guidelines at cristal-lab.ai.

Research Focus

💎 CRISTAL Lab develops cutting-edge foundation models and agentic systems that communicate effectively, reason reliably, and make transparent decisions. Research areas of interest are:

• AI Alignment & Agentic Reasoning: Building foundation models and autonomous multi-agent systems that reason reliably and adhere to human intent, values, and preferences.
  
• Safety, Robustness & Evaluation: Designing systematic evaluation benchmarks and stress-testing frameworks to anticipate failure modes and provide safety guarantees before deployment. 
  
• Transparent & Adaptable Intelligence: Developing techniques for interpretable decision-making, continual/lifelong learning, and trustworthy AI.

Why Join 💎 CRISTAL Lab @ CISPA?

• Founding Lab Culture: Direct 1:1 mentorship paired with full research autonomy to lead independent projects and publish at top AI/ML/NLP venues (NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR, ACL, EMNLP, COLM).
  
• Full Institutional Support & Compute: Fully funded positions with access to dedicated computational infrastructure, conference travel funding, and full visa support.
• Vibrant European Hub: Located at CISPA in Germany, offering competitive full-time salary and benefits (health insurance, paid leave, pension) in an international, English-speaking environment.

How to Apply:

Full application guidelines, research statement expectations, and submission guidelines are available at cristal-lab.ai. For quick questions or potential research collaborations, feel free to reach out to me directly via email at garb...@uchicago.edu.

Please feel free to forward this email to prospective students or researchers who might be a great fit. Thank you so much!

Best regards,
Cristina Garbacea
Incoming Tenure-Track Faculty & Chief Scientist, CISPA
Director, 💎 CRISTAL Lab | cristal-lab.ai