[Opt-Net] PhD Position: Auditing Fairness of AI Systems

[Jakub Marecek]

PhD Position: Auditing Fairness of AI Systems

The problem of auditing AI systems for fairness is becoming urgent both for the vendors of AI systems and the society as a whole. Many human-level decision systems (e.g., hiring, loan approval, etc.) are now being automated, which creates a wealth of critical problems on the interface of statistics, control/game theory, and social sciences.  

The Czech Technical University currently has one opening for a PhD studentship to investigate the above topic, to be supervised by Jakub Marecek (Dept. of Computer Science at the Czech Technical University) and Erik Miehling (IBM Research), in close collaboration with Slava Kungurtsev at CTU and the teams of Robert Shorten at Imperial, Shie Mannor at Technion, and Dimitris Gunopulos at NKUA. The project will be carried out under the umbrella of AutoFair, funded by the European Commission (EC). The project is a part of an EC initiative towards ensuring AI development that is trustworthy and transparent. 

We seek candidates with a Masters degrees in Statistics, Control Theory, Computer Science, Mathematics, Operations Research, or related disciplines, with excellent mathematical aptitude, as demonstrated by involvement in mathematical olympiads, relevant coursework, or undergraduate research. A preference is given to:
candidates with demonstrable interest in AI fairness
candidates with graduate-level coursework in statistics 
candidates with a good understanding of control.

The position is full-time, available immediately, and limited to 3 years in the first instance. The studentship comes with a monthly salary adjusted to approximately match the average salary in Prague, the Czech Republic (which currently stands at approximately EUR 23K p.a. before a notably low tax), and a travel budget. CTU’s offices are centrally-located with easy access to local attractions (as well as a view of Prague Castle). 

To apply, please contact the co-supervisors or upload your CV at https://forms.gle/DmRKZpTNt5G2ejC87

Czech Technical University (CTU) is the oldest non-military technical university in Europe. In the academic year 2020/21, CTU offered 130 degree programs in Czech and 84 in English. QS 2021 ranking of Computer Science programs worldwide has CTU at rank 150. CTU’s Artificial Intelligence Center (AIC) with a staff of 150 is widely recognized as one of the best in the region. CSRankings.org currently ranks it at number 6 in Europe within AI and Computer Vision, after Technion, ETH Zurich, Imperial, Max Planck Society, and EPFL. Since March 2020, Jakub Marecek leads the Optimization research group within the AIC. For more information, please see https://www.aic.fel.cvut.cz/research-areas/optimization

References:
A.R. Fioravanti, J. Mareček, R. N. Shorten, M. Souza, F. R. Wirth. On the ergodic control of ensembles. Automatica, 108, p.108483.
X Zhang, K Zhang, E Miehling, T Başar: Non-cooperative inverse reinforcement learning. Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems, 2019.
MA Zaman, E Miehling, T Başar: Reinforcement learning for non-stationary discrete-time linear–quadratic mean-field games in multiple populations. Dynamic Games and Applications, accepted. 
J. Marecek, M. Roubalik, R. Ghosh, R. N. Shorten, F. R. Wirth. Predictability and Fairness in Load Aggregation and Operations of Virtual Power Plants. Automatica, accepted. arXiv preprint arXiv:2110.03001.


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