Postdoctoral Position: Latent Variable Models for Creative Language Generation

Organisation/Company KU LEUVEN Research Field Computer science Informatics Language sciences Linguistics Researcher Profile Recognised Researcher (R2) Final date to receive applications 10 Aug 2026 - 23:59 (UTC) Country Belgium Type of Contract Temporary Job Status Full-time Offer Starting Date 1 Oct 2026 Is the job funded through the EU Research Framework Programme? Horizon Europe - ERC Reference Number BAP
- Marie Curie Grant Agreement Number  Is the Job related to staff position within a Research Infrastructure? No

• Develop variational inference methods for transformer-based language models, informed by the latent structure of tensor factorization models.
• Investigate the interpretability of the resulting latent space, and its exploitation for creative language generation (metaphor, style).
• Collaborate closely with, and provide day-to-day guidance to, the project’s PhD students (working on tensor factorization and constraint-based neural generation).
• Publish in top-level natural language processing and machine learning venues, and present the project’s results at international conferences.
• You hold a PhD in natural language processing, machine learning, computational linguistics, or a related field, with peer-reviewed publications in the domain.
• You have a strong background in deep learning for natural language processing; experience with latent variable models and/or variational inference is a strong plus.
• You have excellent programming skills (Python, PyTorch) and experience with large-scale experimentation on GPU infrastructure.
• You have experience in guiding junior researchers, or the ambition to develop such experience.
• You exhibit excellent proficiency in English and good oral and written communication skills.
• We offer a full-time postdoctoral position for 2 years.
• You will be able to conduct scientific research within a high-level, ERC-funded research environment, with access to ample computing infrastructure and funding for conference travel.
• You will have considerable research freedom to orient the research based on your own background and vision.
• The position is research-only, without teaching obligations.
• We offer a full-time postdoctoral position for 2 years.
• You will be able to conduct scientific research within a high-level, ERC-funded research environment, with access to ample computing infrastructure and funding for conference travel.
• You will have considerable research freedom to orient the research based on your own background and vision.
• The position is research-only, without teaching obligations.

• You hold a PhD in natural language processing, machine learning, computational linguistics, or a related field, with peer-reviewed publications in the domain.
• You have a strong background in deep learning for natural language processing; experience with latent variable models and/or variational inference is a strong plus.
• You have excellent programming skills (Python, PyTorch) and experience with large-scale experimentation on GPU infrastructure.
• You have experience in guiding junior researchers, or the ambition to develop such experience.
• You exhibit excellent proficiency in English and good oral and written communication skills.