Research Assistants; Postdocs; m​/f​/d - AI

Overview

The University of Rostock offers a diverse, varied and challenging position in a tradition-conscious, yet innovative, modern and family-friendly university in a lively city by the sea.

At the Faculty of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering, Institute for Visual and Analytic Computing, subject to allocation of funds, we are filling two positions at the earliest possible date on a temporary basis for the duration of the project NEXCELL ending on 31.12.2028.

• Title: Research Assistants (Postdocs) (m/f/d) – AI
• Start date: at the earliest possible date
• Working hours: full-time with 40 hours
• Remuneration: pay group 13 TV-L
• Location: Rostock
• Tender number: P 14/2026
• Limitation: limited until 31.12.2028
• Application time:

HR department: Pia-Lucy Dahl
Phone number: 0381/498-1291

Department: Prof. Thomas Kirste
Phone number: 0381/498-7510

The project addresses fundamental and applied challenges at the intersection of machine learning, probabilistic modeling, symbolic AI, and bioprocess engineering, with strong relevance to both academic research and industrial innovation. The positions offer a clearly defined pathway toward postdoctoral qualification, as well as structured opportunities for career development in academia and industry.

NEXCELL is a major multi-million-euro collaborative research initiative that brings together leading industrial and academic partners to create a groundbreaking point-of-care platform for next-generation cell and gene therapies. The vision is to enable personalized cancer treatments to be manufactured directly at the clinical site – making life-saving therapies more accessible and scalable. Within this project, the University of Rostock serves as the AI technology provider, developing a probabilistic digital twin of the NEXCELL bioreactor system.

This digital twin will combine Bayesian AI, deep learning, symbolic reasoning, and hybrid modeling techniques to intelligently monitor and predict both technical and biological processes.

By addressing challenges such as uncertainty quantification, multimodal sensor fusion, anomaly detection, and robust state estimation, our research will push the frontiers of AI in complex, safety-critical, and data-sparse domains. For motivated AI researchers, NEXCELL offers a unique opportunity to conduct fundamental research at the interface of cutting-edge machine learning and real-world bioprocess applications, with the potential for high-impact publications, open-source contributions, and direct collaboration with a market leader in bioreactor technology.

• design, implement, and evaluate deep neural, probabilistic, and hybrid symbolic-learning models for real-time sensor fusion, anomaly detection, and latent state estimation in dynamic bioreactor environments
• adapt and extend large language models (LLMs) and symbolic reasoning frameworks to interpret domain-specific process logs, develop predictive diagnostics, and support explainable and trustworthy decision-making pipelines for bioprocess engineers
• develop multi-modal bioinformatics pipelines for temporal single-cell analysis based on longitudinal pattern mining, geometric and graph deep learning
• collaborate closely with industrial partners and domain experts to curate multimodal process data, design and execute validation experiments, perform simulation studies, and iteratively refine models for deployment in real-world bioprocess settings
• investigate reinforcement learning, simulator-based inference, and adaptive control strategies for feedback control and trajectory tracking in bioprocesses characterized by high uncertainty and complex nonlinear dynamics
• contribute to high-impact, open scientific research, including the development of open-source software tools, co-authorship of peer-reviewed conference and journal publications, presentation of results at international venues, and supervision or mentoring of junior students, thereby establishing a strong and visible scientific profile

• Academic qualifications:
  • completed bachelor's and master’s degree in Computer Science, or a diploma in…