PhD position: cross modal AI for humanitarian relief efforts

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EPFL, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, is one of the most dynamic university campuses in Europe and ranks among the top 20 universities worldwide. The EPFL employs more than 6,500 people supporting the three main missions of the institutions: education, research and innovation. The EPFL campus offers an exceptional working environment at the heart of a community of more than 18,500 people, including over 14,000 students and 4,000 researchers from more than 120 different countries.

PhD position: cross modal AI for humanitarian relief efforts

Your mission

We are offering a challenging position as a full-time (100%) PhD Student at ENAC Faculty at EPFL, Sion.

As a PhD student, you will develop technology for humanitarian data mining and analysis in the framework for the project CARE (Cross-modal AI for Relief Efforts), a collaborative project between EPFL, ETH and the ICRC.

You will innovate in foundational methods for jointly modelling satellite imagery and textual conflict data. Advances in vision-language representation learning will be explored to link the two sources of information through alignment pipelines, localisation models, and damage detection with contextual priors. Working in close interaction with colleagues at ETH and the ICRC, you will create new capabilities directly aligned with the ICRC's priorities in situational awareness and evidence-informed response and propose operational tools.

Main duties and responsibilities include:

• Design multimodal deep learning-based methodologies linking satellite image and textual data about conflicts.




• Develop approaches for events localization, with emphasis on robustness across events (domain adaptation).




• Develop tools for visualization and data analysis together with colleagues at the ICRC.




• Write publications.




• Attend international conferences, both in machine learning and remote sensing.




• Participate in the educational activities of the ENAC faculty.

Your profile

• You have a master's degree in computer science.




• You have experience with the humanitarian sector and/or in remote sensing.




• You are proficient in Python coding and deep learning frameworks.




• You are fluent in English.




• You are motivated, curious, and willing to work in a highly dynamic team.

We offer

• An opportunity to develop a scientific career in an exciting area of science.




• A unique opportunity to learn high-end techniques and approaches.




• Excellent educational conditions and competitive remuneration.




• A multi-cultural and stimulating scientific environment, in the EPFL-Valais campus in Sion.

Contract Start Date: 01/01/2027

Activity Rate: 100.00

Contract Type: PhD Student

Duration: 1 year (candidacy examination) + up to 5 years after

Reference: 2411

For more information, please contact:

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