PhD Fellowship in Agentic AI and Large Language Models for Global Pathogen Analysis University of Copenhagen in Denmark

PhD fellowship in Agentic AI and Large Language Models for Global Pathogen Analysis at the University of Copenhagen.

This opening is part of the Global Pathogen Analysis Platform (GPAP), a major international initiative supported by the Novo Nordisk Foundation and involving the University of Copenhagen, the Technical University of Denmark, Statens Serum Institut, and Imperial College London. The project sits in the Department of Public Health and the Bhatt-Duchene Group, working at the intersection of computer science, mathematics, biology, epidemiology, bioinformatics, and public health.

The PhD project focuses on LLMs, foundation models, agentic AI, AI-for-Science, and scientific software systems for pathogen genomic analysis. Research directions include tool-using AI systems for bioinformatics pipelines, automated scientific reporting, pre/mid/post-training and evaluation of LLMs for biological and phylogenetic tasks, and reliable, auditable workflows for infectious disease surveillance and outbreak analysis.

Supervision is by Professor Samir Bhatt (principal supervisor), with co-supervisors Harrison Bo Hua Zhu and Neil Scheidwasser. The role is embedded in a large research infrastructure with high-performance computing and GPU clusters, and it aims to produce both methodological research and deployable software with real-world impact.

Eligibility: applicants should hold a master’s degree equivalent to a Danish two-year MSc in a relevant quantitative field such as computer science, data science, statistics, economics, or computational linguistics. Strong Python, Git, and deep learning framework experience is expected, along with excellent English and the ability to work independently and collaboratively. Experience with LLM infrastructure, distributed training, MLOps, HPC, or computational biology is a plus.

Funding and terms: the fellowship is funded through GPAP/Novo Nordisk Foundation support. The position is fixed-term for 3 years, with an initial 3-month research assistant period for PhD enrolment if needed. Salary starts at approximately 31,600 DKK / 4,200 EUR per month plus pension, depending on seniority.

Deadline: 8 July 2026, 23:59 CET. Applications must be submitted electronically through the university portal and include a motivated letter, CV, certified MSc diploma and transcript, and a publication list if available.