Fully Funded PhD and Postdoc Positions in LLM Theory, Interpretability, and Safety Saarland University in Germany

Fully funded PhD and postdoc opportunities are available in LLM theory, interpretability, and safety at the Language, Computation, and Cognition Lab at Saarland University, Germany.

The lab focuses on understanding the abilities, limitations, and inner workings of language models, with research connected to computer science, linguistics, and cognitive science. The group highlights recent work in venues such as NeurIPS, ICLR, ICML, and COLM, and gives students substantial freedom in choosing a research topic.

PhD positions: Fully funded PhD positions are open. Students with an MSc can directly join the lab; applicants without an MSc may apply through central portals and may have an initial preparatory phase. The PhD is expected to take about 3–4 years. The lab is affiliated with the Saarbrücken Graduate School of Computer Science.

Postdoc positions: Postdoc applicants can apply directly by email. Start dates are flexible and negotiable.

Funding: The lab states that PhD positions are fully funded and that the group is generously funded by the Emmy Noether Program and Heinz Maier Leibnitz Preis from the German Research Foundation. The lab also mentions strong compute resources. Interns are generally unpaid, though housing may be possible for undergraduates from outside Germany and stipends may be possible for graduate students.

Eligibility highlights: Strong programming skills and strong grades in a relevant technical field are expected. For direct PhD application, an MSc by the start date is required. Applicants should also be prepared to reference recent publications from the group in their motivation statement.

Application window: The next deadline for direct PhD application is 2026-06-18. The post also mentions end of June 2026 for IMPRS-TRUST. For direct applications, email Michael Hahn at [email protected] and quote reference number W2867.