Licentiate in trustworthy conversational agents in smart energy buildings. - Hiring in process/Finished, not possible to apply

Project description

Approximately one-third of Sweden's population resides in home-owner associations that regularly lose around 25% of their energy and money on building inefficiencies. Since these buildings have a need to conduct energy efficiency projects, but lack the resources and competencies of commercial housing companies, there is a pressing need to provide professional advice to home-owner associations to ensure that Sweden and Stockholm can meet their climate goals, and that those buildings can comply with the upcoming European Energy Efficiency Directive.

This Licentiate is proposed within the DigiCityClimate project. The project aims at building a chatbot for citizens, the city of Stockholm and researchers to interact and access data to drive climate actions and fulfill the city of Stockholm’s climate plan. Among others, this platform will provide an AI-driven energy advisor resource to support citizens to take climate action by smart energy investments.

The aim of the project is to develop and implement an intelligent and useful chatbot advisor for building energy efficiency. This work will be done in collaboration with a multidisciplinary team of researchers and energy climate advisors from Stockholm city. This chatbot, envisioned as a hybrid model integrating existing generic LLMs like ChatGPT with specialized context through frameworks such as LangChain, will be tested with users from housing associations. Your research will focus on three critical areas: personalizing energy efficiency recommendations based on individual building characteristics, user behaviour, and expert feedback; investigating how the chatbot can best engage users in energy-efficient practices through effective communication strategies; and ensuring the validity and trustworthiness of the chatbot's advice, particularly in defining safe application limits and enhancing its reliability to prevent misinformation. Hence, your research is expected to foster better understanding of AI's potential and barriers for sustainable urban living and contribute to acceleration of AI-based urban climate transition.

Third-cycle subject:  Information and communication technology

Supervision: Professor Anne Håkansson  with co-supervision of Oleksii Pasichnyi & Hossein Shahrokni

What we offer

• The possibility to study in a dynamic and international research environment in collaboration with industries and prominent universities from all over the world.Read more
• A workplace with many employee benefits and monthly salary according to KTH’s Doctoral student salary agreement.
• A postgraduate education at an institution that is active and supportive in matters pertaining to working conditions, gender equality and diversity as well as study environment.
• Help to relocate and be settled in Sweden and at KTH.

Admission requirements

To be admitted to postgraduate education (Chapter 7, 39 § Swedish Higher Education Ordinance), the applicant must have basic eligibility in accordance with either of the following:

• passed a second cycle degree (for example a master's degree), or
• completed course requirements of at least 240 higher education credits, of which at least 60 second-cycle higher education credits, or
• acquired, in some other way within or outside the country, substantially equivalent knowledge

In addition to the above, there is also a mandatory requirement for English equivalent to English B/6, read more here

Selection

In order to succeed as a doctoral student at KTH you need to be goal oriented and persevering in your work. During the selection process, candidates will be assessed upon their ability to:

• independently pursue his or her work
• collaborate with others,
• have a professional approach, 
• analyse and work with complex issues, 
• present proficiency in programming languages commonly used in AI/ML (e.g. Python, Java, R) and typical machine learning frameworks and libraries (e.g., TensorFlow, PyTorch)
• demonstrate familiarity with natural language processing (NLP) and chatbot development platforms and
• present strong communication skills both oral and written. 

The candidate shall hold a MSc in Computer Science, Data Science, Artificial Intelligence or similar and address challenges in creative and innovative manner. 

Knowledge of Swedish will be considered as meritorious. 

After the qualification requirements, great emphasis will be placed on personal competency. 

Target degree: Licentiate

Information regarding admission and employment

Only those admitted to postgraduate education may be employed as a doctoral student. The total length of employment may not be longer than what corresponds to full-time doctoral education in four years ' time. An employed doctoral student can, to a limited extent (maximum 20%), perform certain tasks within their role, e.g. training and administration. A new position as a doctoral student is for a maximum of one year, and then the employment may be renewed for a maximum of two years at a time. In the case of studies that are to be completed with a licentiate degree, the total period of employment may not be longer than what corresponds to full-time doctoral education for two years.

Union representatives

KTH's website.

Doctoral section (Students’ union on KTH Royal Institute of Technology)

section's website.

To apply for the position

Apply for the position and admission through KTH's recruitment system. It is the applicant’s responsibility to ensure that the application is complete in accordance with the instructions in the advertisement.

Applications must be received at the last closing date at midnight, CET/CEST (Central European Time/Central European Summer Time).

Applications must include:

• CV including your relevant professional experience and knowledge.
• Application letter with a brief description of why you want to pursue research studies, about what your academic interests are and how they relate to your previous studies and future goals. (Maximum 2 pages long)
• Copies of diplomas and grades from previous university studies and certificates of fulfilled language requirements (see above). Translations into English or Swedish if the original document is not issued in one of these languages.Copies of originals must be certified.
• Representative publications or technical reports. For longer documents, please provide a summary (abstract) and a web link to the full text.

Other information

The position may include security-sensitive activities. To become authorized, you therefore need to pass a possible security check.

Striving towards gender equality, diversity and equal conditions is both a question of quality for KTH and a given part of our values.

For information about processing of personal data in the recruitment process please read here.

We firmly decline all contact with staffing, recruitment agencies and job ad salespersons.

Disclaimer: In case of discrepancy between the Swedish original and the English translation of the job announcement, the Swedish version takes precedence.