PhD or Postdoc position in Computational Social Science in Zürich

80%-100%, Zurich, fixed-term

Research at the Professorship of Computational Social Science (COSS) is focused on:

1. bringing modeling and computer simulation of social processes and transportation phenomena together with technology, experimental, and data-driven work,
2. combining the perspectives of different scientific disciplines (e.g. social science, computer science, complexity science and sociophysics)
3. bridging fundamental and applied work,
4. developing digital tools to support people and studying the resulting behavior.

Information about the COSS team and its projects can be found on our website .

The candidate would contribute to ambitious, internationally competitive research projects that aim to create novel research breakthroughs in one or several of the subject areas below connected to smart cities and digital societies:

• Digital Democracy, digitally assisted collective intelligence
• Human-centered AI to benefit society
• Socio-ecological finance system, possibly connected to blockchain systems
• IoT-supported, multi-dimensional real-time feedback and incentive systems

Please visit our webpages for more information about our projects.

The candidate should have an excellent research background in computational social science, complexity science, computer science, data science, socio-physics and/or transportation science, with a strong international publication track record in one of the areas mentioned above.

Excellent scientific and computational skills, English language skills, social skills, and international experience are required.

We expect the candidate to appreciate collaborating in an interdisciplinary and multicultural team to jointly and systematically address grand scientific challenges.

Please indicate whether you are also skilled and willing to develop a software platform of reasonable complexity or a smartphone app, or are able to develop parallel code for parallel processing on supercomputers, and what software environments you are using for this.

The initial contract would usually last for 2 years and may be extended.

ETH Zurich is one of the world’s leading universities specialising in science and technology. We are renowned for our excellent education, cutting-edge fundamental research and direct transfer of new knowledge into society. Over 30,000 people from more than 120 countries find our university to be a place that promotes independent thinking and an environment that inspires excellence. Located in the heart of Europe, yet forging connections all over the world, we work together to develop solutions for the global challenges of today and tomorrow.