Edoardo Ponti
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4 months ago
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PhD and Postdoc Positions in Foundation Models, Adaptive Tokenisation, and Memory at Imperial College London Imperial College London in United Kingdom
Degree Level
PhD, Postdoc
Field of study
Computer Science
Funding
The PhD and postdoc positions are described as fully funded. The project is funded by an European Research Council (ERC) Starting Grant. Imperial College London also notes that many PhD studentships are funded through research councils, research projects, industry, and teaching scholarships.
Deadline
Expired
Country
United Kingdom
University
Imperial College London
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About this position
Imperial College London is recruiting PhD students and postdocs for research with Edoardo Ponti in the Department of Computing. The project focuses on foundation models, adaptive tokenisation, memory compression, and efficient large language models, including KV cache compression, long-context modelling, and energy-efficient AI.
The advertised research direction is part of an ERC Starting Grant project called AToM FMs (adaptive tokenisation and memory). The lab aims to study whether foundation models can learn end-to-end to adapt the length of their representations rather than relying on fixed tokenisation and growing memory. The post highlights prior work on self-compressing Transformer architectures, dynamic memory compression, latent autoregressive tokenisation, and long-horizon modelling.
Position types: PhD and postdoc openings are explicitly mentioned. The positions are stated to be fully funded, and starting dates are flexible.
Eligibility and requirements: For the PhD route, Imperial states that applicants are normally expected to hold a First Class or Distinction Masters degree, or equivalent, in a relevant scientific or technical discipline such as computer science or mathematics. Applicants with only a bachelor’s degree are usually not considered directly for the PhD. The post does not list formal postdoc requirements, but strong alignment with NLP, machine learning, and efficient transformer research is implied.
How to apply: Interested candidates should email or DM Edoardo Ponti. For the PhD application, Imperial directs applicants to the Computing Research degree and the online application system. The department notes that there is currently no application fee and that overseas candidates needing funding should apply by the December funding deadline.
Deadline information: For 2026 entry, Imperial says applications open in October 2025 and can be made throughout the year. The funding-related deadline highlighted in the department page is 15 April 2026 for one of the listed rounds, with earlier deadlines also shown for other rounds. The post itself does not give a single fixed deadline, so applicants should check the department page and apply early.
Research keywords: foundation models, adaptive tokenisation, memory compression, efficient transformers, NLP, long-context learning, continual learning, world modelling, inference-time scaling.
Funding details
The PhD and postdoc positions are described as fully funded. The project is funded by an European Research Council (ERC) Starting Grant. Imperial College London also notes that many PhD studentships are funded through research councils, research projects, industry, and teaching scholarships.
What's required
Applicants should be interested in foundation models, adaptive tokenisation, memory compression, and efficient machine learning/NLP. The Imperial College London PhD page indicates applicants are normally expected to have a First Class or Distinction Masters level degree, or equivalent, in a relevant scientific or technical discipline such as computer science or mathematics; candidates with only a bachelor's degree are usually not considered for the PhD directly. For postdoc roles, relevant research experience in the project areas is implied, but no formal postdoc requirements are stated in the post.
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