Postdoctoral Position in Mathematics

Description of the workplace

Mathematics Centre has approximately 150 employees, including researchers, teachers, and doctoral students. The department offers education and research in a wide range of mathematical areas. The position will be placed at the Department of Computer Vision and Machine Learning (CVML) at the Mathematics Centre (https://maths.lu.se/). Mathematics Centre is a department affiliated with both the Faculty of Engineering (LTH) and the Faculty of Science at Lund University. Within CVML there are several PhD-level researchers as well as approximately 20 doctoral students. Research in the area began in the mid-1980s and currently includes (i) Geometry and computer vision (including analysis of video, audio, radio, and radar signals), (ii) Medical image analysis, and (iii) Machine learning/artificial intelligence. The group has extensive experience in fundamental research in computer vision, machine learning, and artificial intelligence, as well as a history of translating such results into practical applications for end users.

Subject Description

The research aims to develop machine learning models for microbe detection, focusing on the mathematical foundations in geometry and statistics for multimodal data. The project includes integration of morphological image data, biochemical signatures from Raman spectroscopy, and time-dependent signals using graph-based representations.

The goal is to capture structural relationships between these modalities through segmentation models adapted to microbial morphology, contrastive self-supervised pretraining, few-shot learning for generalization in data-scarce situations, and graph neural networks to model relational and topological structures. Other methodological directions include development of customized loss functions for spatio-temporal analysis, use of latent variable models such as VAEs, GANs, and diffusion models to capture complex distributions, methods for interpretability (e.g., SHAP values), as well as uncertainty quantification and robustness analysis in high-dimensional and noisy data.

The models will be complemented with rigorous theoretical analysis and optimization methods, where tools from spectral graph theory, information theory, differential geometry, and statistical learning theory are used to understand, validate, and improve performance.

Work duties

The job responsibilities as a postdoctoral researcher primarily include conducting research. Teaching may also be part of the job responsibilities, but not more than one fifth of working time. Within the framework of the employment, there is an opportunity for three weeks of university pedagogical training. The purpose of the employment is to develop one’s independence as a researcher and to create conditions for further merit.

Detailed description of the work duties, such as:

• Research at undergraduate, advanced, and doctoral levels
• Supervision of degree projects and doctoral students

Qualification requirements 

Appointment to a post-doctoral position requires that the applicant has a PhD, or an international degree deemed equivalent to a PhD, within the subject of the position. The certificate proving the qualification requirement is met, must be received before the employment decision is made. Priority will be given to candidates who have graduated no more than three years ago before the last day for application. Under special circumstances, the doctoral degree can have been completed earlier.

Additional requirements:

• Very good oral and written proficiency in English
• Good ability to collaborate
• You must be motivated and proactive
• You must be able to work independently and in a team
• You must be persistent

Assessment criteria 

This is a career development position primarily focused on research. The position is intended as an initial step in a career, and the assessment of the applicants will primarily be based on their research qualifications and potential as researchers. Particular emphasis will be placed on research skills within the subject.

For appointments to a post-doctoral position, the following shall form the assessment criteria:

• A good ability to develop and conduct high quality research.
• Teaching skills. 

Other qualifications:

• Programming experience as well as previous experience with the above methods and work with high-performance computing (HPC).
• Experience in analysis of spectroscopy data, spatial statistics, and data from soil or bacterial samples.

Consideration will be given to how the applicant, through their experience and competence, is assessed to complement and strengthen the research within the department/institute and contribute to its future development.

We offer

Lund University is a government authority, which means that you receive special benefits, generous vacation, and a favorable occupational pension. Read more on the university’s website about Working with us.

Further information

This is a full-time, fixed-term employment of 2 years. The period of employment is determined in accordance with the agreement “Avtal om tidsbegränsad anställning som postdoktor” (“Agreement on fixed-term employment as a post-doctoral fellow”).

The desired start date is 1 October 2025, but no later than 1 January 2026.

How to apply

The application must be written in English and should include a CV including publication list, a personal letter with motivation for why you are interested in the position and in what way the position matches your research merits. The application must also include a copy of the doctoral degree or equivalent as well as any other material you wish to invoke (copies of transcripts, reference details, recommendation letters, etc.).

Welcome with your application!