Apply for a PhD at the van der Schaar Lab
Key information can be found below.
van der Schaar Lab is recruiting 5 PhD positions starting 2024
Join our Machine Learning Lab for a PhD at the University of Cambridge!
Ready to push the boundaries of research, as a part of a dynamic and world-renowned group dedicated to harnessing the power of MachineLearning to tackle real-world challenges?
We are thrilled to announce that the van der Schaar lab is actively seeking 5 exceptional PhD students, with a keen interest in the following areas:
- Human-AI alignment,
- Foundational Models,
- AI for Scientific Discovery,
- Reinforcement and Inverse Reinforcement Learning,
- Synthetic Data and Simulators.
All available positions are fully-funded. We are committed to fostering a diverse and inclusive research environment, and funding is available to both home and international students.
Applications are reviewed on a rolling basis, so we encourage you to seize this opportunity and apply as soon as possible.
For detailed information about our recruitment process and to submit your application, please visit: https://www.vanderschaar-lab.com/join-the-van-der-schaar-lab/
What does CCAIM offer?
Co-Supervision
One thing that sets these PhD studentships apart from those of many other elite institutions is co-supervision.
You will have not one but two dedicated supervisors, drawn from different disciplines, with the additional mentorship of an industry supervisor. As you may appreciate, true co-supervision is a luxury in PhD studentships, but it is foundational to our ways of thinking and working.
Through receiving supervision from the varied experts within CCAIM, our students will strengthen the connective tissue between the fields of ML, bioscience and medicine. Through new PhD studentships being offered each year, we will grow a unique network of interdisciplinary excellence: the future leaders in AI for medicine.
Future Prospects
Employers in industry and academia will know that CCAIM attracts and develops only the brightest stars in their fields.
When you graduate, you will be able to write your own ticket. Alumni of the van der Schaar Lab, for example, have become leaders in their fields, some continuing to full professorships and others joining top private-sector teams including Google, Intel, and Apple.
Funding
Our studentships are fully funded for four years, through the generous support of our industry partners, AstraZeneca and GSK. This funding covers UK/international University of Cambridge fees in addition to living costs (stipend).
Why join CCAIM?
- Interdisciplinary – The Centre’s expertise is broad and deep, stimulating cross-disciplinary research and development of artificial intelligence (AI) for medicine, biomedical science and healthcare. Our team comprises a unique coalition of leading Cambridge scientists, clinicians, medical researchers, geneticists, computational biologists, data scientists, policy leaders, and biostatisticians. We host researchers from a variety of backgrounds and sectors – virtually and in-person – to break the barriers between machine learning, AI, and biomedicine. Our thoroughly interdisciplinary methods are leading to the discovery of new links and causal relationships among clinical data, genetic data, proteomic data, metabolic data and more.
- Creative – Artists and writers are frequently lauded as “creatives”, and rightly so because they use their imagination and talent to communicate new visions for the future. We believe engineers and mathematicians are equally creative – building tools and systems that transform the world we live in. Our researchers whole-heartedly believe the AI sector is generating the most creative jobs on earth and are driven by a desire to elevate young and diverse leaders interested in shaping the future.
- Revolutionary – AI and ML have the potential to turbocharge medical discovery and revolutionise personalised healthcare delivery, including the administration of treatments over time and the way in which clinical trials are conducted. Our Centre is actively producing novel algorithms, methods and systems for biomedical discovery, omics analytics, precision medicine, and next-generation adaptive clinical trials.
- World-renowned – Our leadership team is made up of top researchers in the field from leading universities around the globe. As a researcher with the Centre you will be invited to regular roundtable days and seminars focused on bringing interested Cambridge scientists and clinicians together with national and international leaders and industry partners. Together, we will identify and formalise problems, produce consensus white papers on the basis of the emerging ideas, and establish our group as the nationally and internationally recognised think tank for AI in medicine.
- Close ties with the Industry – We are working closely with our partners at AstraZeneca and GSK who are not only providing the funding but also crucial expertise and real-life connections. Experienced researchers will support you as industry supervisors. That opens the opportunity to work with interesting data and to have a chance of a placement at your industry partner to understand the cutting-edge research happening in pharmaceutical industry.
What are we looking for?
We are seeking the brightest minds in the world. At the very least you should hold (or be predicted to achieve) the equivalent of a first-class undergraduate degree with honours at a world-class academic institution. Note that your supervisors will work with you, providing private tuition customised to develop the additional skills that you need while also building on your strengths. As such, if you are stronger in quantitative skills and less so in bioscience (or vice versa), we still encourage you to apply.
We are looking for two distinct types of candidates:
1. Candidates with quantitative skills, developed during a degree in a quantitative subject such as engineering, computer science, or mathematics (experience in ML is a distinct plus). As such, you will be pushing to achieve breakthroughs in ML, which will ultimately enable cascading breakthroughs in bioscience and healthcare.
2. Candidates with prowess in bioscience – with a strong quantitative aspect – developed during a degree in a subject such as biophysics, microbiology, cell or molecular biology, computational biology, or genetics. As such, you will be pushing to achieve breakthroughs in bioscience and healthcare, powered by bespoke ML methods.
Key details – please read carefully!
The CCAIM runs an initial application round from 1 October to 31 December at 11.59pm GMT
Our PhDs are fully-funded but applicants wishing to apply for other sources of funding too should take into consideration the following deadlines:
Gates US funding: 12 October 2022
All other funding: 5 January 2023
More information on applying for funding can be found here: Funding | Postgraduate Admissions
Application process:
Each of our studentships will be based in one of several University of Cambridge schools, including the:
- School of Clinical Medicine
- School of Physical Sciences
- School of Technology
- School of Biological Sciences
- School of Humanities and Social Sciences, or
- Wellcome Sanger Institute in Cambridge (PhD studentships at the Sanger will be administered through the University of Cambridge).
This is a rolling application process, and when the PhD studentships are allocated and confirmed, recruitment will close. To make an initial application to the centre, please first fill out the form below and someone from the centre will contact you in due course. We will arrange interviews with selected candidates. After interviews, we will make our final choices and then we will make conditional offers of funding to those successful candidates.
These offers of funding are conditional on the candidate being officially accepted as an eligible PhD candidate by the University of Cambridge. In practical terms, this means that after our conditional offers are made, those successful candidates will then be asked to apply via the formal University of Cambridge system. For a description of that formal application process, see the information on the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics website.
The absolute deadline for formal applications to the University of Cambridge (step 2) is 16 May 2023.
To be clear, you can make a formal application at any time, but we would prefer it if you would express your interest first through the CCAIM website, using the form below. We will inform you later in the process if you subsequently need to make a formal application.
Open House 2022:
Want to meet us before you apply? On Tuesday 8 November, we will be hosting our Virtual Open House for prospective PhD students. The Open House is for prospective students and interested parties to learn about the Centre’s PhD opportunities and research projects. There will be opportunities to meet our Directors, learn about the application process, and hear from current students.
Interested? Submit an initial application!
Please fill out the form using the link below, uploading your CV and providing links to any relevant publications.
We’ll make every effort to review your application, but please note that this may take a while (due to the volume of applications, combined with internal requirements regarding timeframes for evaluating and accepting new researchers).
Please also note that we will only contact you if we plan to follow up (i.e. learn more about you or invite you to interview). Additionally, note that you do not need to submit your information via the University of Cambridge’s website unless we have contacted you to follow up on your application.
Please note that the embedded form may not be compatible with mobile or tablet devices, or with certain browsers – please access the form here if it is unavailable below. Good luck!
