Lonneke van der Plas

Università della Svizzera italiana (USI) is advertising a fully funded postdoctoral position in Natural Language Processing (NLP) within the SATURNA project in Lugano, Switzerland. The role sits in the USI NLP Lab and focuses on drawing parallels between text sequences and RNA sequences , using advances in NLP to learn informative representations of RNA. The project is highly interdisciplinary and connects large language models , graph deep learning , knowledge-enhanced AI , computational biology , and translational science. The postdoc will work under the supervision of Prof. Lonneke van der Plas and collaborate with researchers and PhD students across USI, EPFL, the Idiap Research Institute, the University of Bern, and the National University of Singapore. The broader SATURNA initiative aims to decode RNA structure, modification, and function for therapeutic development, with scientific themes including language models for RNA sequences, graph-based machine learning, knowledge-augmented RNA modeling, computational RNA biology, and RNA therapeutics. Funding: the position is fully funded for 2 years and is renewable for another 2 years . Eligibility/fit: candidates should have strong interests in NLP and machine learning, especially transformer-based models, interpretability, benchmarking, and interdisciplinary AI for biology. Collaboration across institutions is a key part of the role. Application: screening starts on 2026-07-13 , and applications will be accepted until the position is filled. Interested candidates should apply via the provided link.