We are looking for 2 Research Assistant and 2 PostDocs (m/f/d) - AI
We invite four outstanding early‑career researchers – 2 PhD and 2 Post‑doctoral level – to join our institute in partnership with a global leader in bioreactor technology. In a major research project, you will spearhead the development and application of cutting‑edge AI methods – incl. deep learning, LLMs, probabilistic and symbolic modeling – for transformative system monitoring and state estimation in next‑generation bioreactors. This interdisciplinary role pffers a clear path toward doctoral or postdoctoral qualification, and career development in both academia and industry.
NEXCELL is a major multi-million-€ collaborative research initiative that brings together leading industrial and academic partners to create a groundbreaking point-of-care platform for next-generation cell and gene therapies. The vision is to enable personalized cancer treatments to be manufactured directly at the clinical site – making life-saving therapies more accessible and scalable. Within this project, the University of Rostock serves as the AI technology provider, developing a probabilistic digital twin of the NEXCELL bioreactor system. This digital twin will combine Bayesian AI, deep learning, symbolic reasoning, and hybrid modeling techniques to intelligently monitor and predict both technical and biological processes. By addressing challenges such as uncertainty quantification, multimodal sensor fusion, anomaly detection, and robust state estimation, our research will push the frontiers of AI in complex, safety-critical, and data-sparse domains. For motivated AI researchers, NEXCELL offers a unique opportunity to conduct fundamental research at the interface of cutting-edge machine learning and real-world bioprocess applications, with the potential for high-impact publications, open-source contributions, and direct collaboration with a market leader in bioreactor technology.
We invite four outstanding early‑career researchers – 2 PhD and 2 Post‑doctoral level – to join our institute in partnership with a global leader in bioreactor technology. In a major research project, you will spearhead the development and application of cutting‑edge AI methods – incl. deep learning, LLMs, probabilistic and symbolic modeling – for transformative system monitoring and state estimation in next‑generation bioreactors. This interdisciplinary role pffers a clear path toward doctoral or postdoctoral qualification, and career development in both academia and industry.
Before applying for a thesis at the chair of MMIS, please solve one of the following small self assessment tasks to show your skills:
1. Signal Analysis
Analyse the following datafiles (SelfAssement1.csv, SelfAssement5.csv). They contain a mixture of three signals each and we would like to know which signals these are and how you analysed the datasets. Please submit your solution as a python script, Jupyter notebook, or R script. Your file has to load the data file, describe your ideas while analysing the data, and finally show a description as well as a plot of the three sub-signals.
2. Neural Networks
Build a convolutional auto-encoder using Keras and train it using the CIFAR10 dataset. Afterwards remove the decoder part and replace it with a classification head, i.e., a fully connected sub-network which maps the latent representation generated by the autoencoder to the output classes provided as true labels from the dataset. Use only a small balanced subset of the labelled training data to train the classification head. The pre-trained encoder should help to create better classification results, compared to a classification network trained on the small labelled dataset. Explain how you created the labelled subset for training, the architectures of the two networks and the evaluation.
Co-Supervision for external Theses
If you are doing your thesis in some company or research institute outside the University of Rostock, you will need a supervisor here. We are accepting co-supervision of your thesis under the following conditions:
You apply for a thesis as described above
You send us a detailed topic description as a one-page PDF which contains the general idea, a list of sub-tasks you will have to perform
Prior to signing the official documents we will have a joint telephone / video conference with your external supervisor and you. You will have to arrange that meeting!
The company has to allow a joint publication of the results
