Postdoctoral Position in Speech Language Modelling

Postdoctoral Position in Speech Language Modelling

Post Doc

part-time

We are looking for a postdoc to join the Language and Predictive Computation research group, led by Dr. Micha Heilbron, at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics.

Language models acquire remarkable linguistic abilities, but are using a pre-defined vocabulary and text pre-segmented in a way that matches this vocabulary. Human listeners face a continuous acoustic stream, and must work out what the relevant units are before they can predict them. Models that learn from speech alone face the same problem, which makes them a unique direct testbed for theories of how linguistic structure can be learned.

Current speech models tackle this problem by predicting very low-level acoustic segments, rather than predicting any meaningful linguistic unit. Models that learn from speech alone face the same problem, which makes them a unique direct testbed for theories of how linguistic structure can be learned. Current speech models tackle this problem by predicting very low-level acoustic segments, rather than predicting any meaningful linguistic unit.

The research team will consist of the postdoctoral researcher together with Dr Micha Heilbron. The successful candidate will be expected to take a leading role in shaping this line of work within the group, and may also supervise master students working on related projects.

What we expect from you:

• A PhD - or equivalent - in a relevant discipline (e.g., computational linguistics, speech technology, AI, cognitive science, computer science, psycholinguistics). Candidates who have submitted their thesis, or expect to defend before the starting date, are welcome to apply.
• Demonstrable experience developing neural models of speech, including training models from scratch rather than only fine-tuning or evaluating existing ones.
• Strong programming skills in Python; proficiency with PyTorch or equivalent ML frameworks; experience working on GPU clusters.
• Experience with methods for analysing model-internal representations (e.g., probing classifiers, representational similarity analysis, discrimination or structural probes), or closely related interpretability work.
• A track record of peer-reviewed publications in a relevant area.
• Excellent written and spoken English.
• The ability to work independently within an interdisciplinary team.

• Formal training in linguistics or a closely related field - in particular phonetics and phonology - and genuine interest in what models learning from speech can and cannot tell us about linguistic theory.
• Experience designing psycholinguistically controlled stimulus sets or experimental paradigms to test hypotheses about model behaviour.
• Experience relating model representations to human behavioural or neural data (EEG, MEG, fMRI or intracranial recordings), or a clear interest in developing this.
• Experience with large-scale or distributed model training on HPC infrastructure.
• An explicit interest in, and commitment to, Open Science - including the release of code, trained models and intermediate checkpoints.
• Interest in supervising students and in contributing to the wider research community (e.g. workshops, tutorials, outreach).

• A 0.8 FTE position fully funded for 1 year. The intended starting date is October/November 2026.
• Salary according to the German TVöD (Tarifvertrag für den öffentlichen Dienst) in the salary group/level E13: depending on the experience of the applicant, between EUR 5.709,87 and EUR 7.025,87 gross per month, based on full time employment, excluding an 8% holiday bonus.
• 30 holidays per year, based on full-time employment; in addition, we honour both Dutch and German public holidays.
• Enrolment in a personal pension scheme to which both employer and employee pay a monthly contribution.

The Final date to receive applications is 28 August.

For questions and informal enquiries, please contact Dr. Micha Heilbron (Micha.Heilbron ).

The Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics is a world-leading research institute devoted to interdisciplinary studies of the science of…