The Department of Computing at the University of Turku and ELLIS Institute Finland invite applications for a full-time Doctoral Researcher position and a full-time Postdoctoral Researcher position. Both roles are integrated into the high-impact research project, FINe-Health Foundry, in collaboration with ELLIS Institute Finland and partner institutions.
Host Institution: University of Turku (Department of Computing, Faculty of Technology)
Affiliations: ELLIS Institute Finland & University of Turku
Location: Espoo or Turku, Finland (On-site)
Application Deadline: August 17, 2026 at 16.00 (Europe/Helsinki)
Position 1: Doctoral Researcher in Foundation Health Models
The Department of Computing at the Faculty of Technology invites applications for a full-time Doctoral Researcher position. This role focuses on developing a nationwide, versatile foundation health model using Finland's national health databases. The fixed-term position starts based on mutual agreement, and ends 30.9.2029 with potential extension.
Research Pillars
The successful candidate will focus on one of the following pillars:
- Pretraining Foundation Health Model: Researching and building training pipelines for foundation models trained on nationwide health databases and structured longitudinal electronic health records.
- Medical Reasoning and Grounding: Developing advanced post-training techniques to ensure foundation health models reason accurately over medical knowledge graphs and clinical instructions while verifying factuality and safety boundaries.
- Agentic Methods for Virtual Labs: Constructing interactive "virtual laboratories" where medical professionals can interact with, audit, and align LLM-powered medical agents with clinical guidelines.
Requirements
- MSc degree in Computer Science, Data Science, Machine Learning, or a closely related quantitative field.
- A solid foundation in Computer Science with a deep understanding of Artificial Intelligence and related algorithms.
- A strong interest in or prior experience with medical AI, Natural Language Processing, or clinical data analysis.
- Excellent analytical and problem-solving skills.
- Programming skills and experience with deep learning frameworks (PyTorch, Hugging Face, etc.).
- Good communication skills in English (written and spoken).
- A strong track record of publications in top-tier AI/NLP conferences will be a plus.
Position 2: Postdoctoral Researcher in Foundation Health Models
The Department of Computing at the Faculty of Technology invites applications for a full-time Postdoctoral Researcher position. This role focuses on leading the development of pretraining pipelines and clinical alignment techniques for clinical foundation models. The fixed-term position starts based on mutual agreement, and is initially for 2 years.
Research Pillars
The successful candidate will lead activities in one of the following pillars:
- Pretraining Foundation Health Model: Leading the design and scaling of pretraining pipelines on nationwide health databases and structured longitudinal electronic health records.
- Medical Reasoning and Grounding: Developing advanced post-training and alignment techniques (RLHF, DPO, GRPO) to ensure foundation health models reason accurately and safely.
- Agentic Methods for Virtual Labs: Researching and constructing interactive agentic frameworks and virtual labs for expert human-in-the-loop auditing and alignment.
Requirements
- Ph.D. in Machine Learning, Natural Language Processing, Computer Science, or a closely related field.
- A strong track record of publications in top-tier AI/NLP conferences.
- Advanced experience in training large language models or handling multi-modal clinical data.
- Strong organizational skills and experience in collaborative research tasks.
- Good communication skills in English (written and spoken).
What We Offer
- World-Class Computing Resources: Access to state-of-the-art local clusters (Roihu and Triton) and the LUMI Supercomputer (one of the world's fastest and greenest supercomputers, located in Finland).
- Collaborative Network: Direct integration into the University of Turku and the ELLIS Institute Finland research ecosystem, with opportunities to work alongside leading experts across Europe.
- Excellent Work-Life Balance: Generous annual leave, comprehensive healthcare, and the high quality of life typical of Finland.
- Competitive Salary: Follows the university salary system, including standard pension and social security benefits, depending on previous experience and skills.
How to Apply & Enquiries
Interested candidates should apply via the official university application portals linked above.
Any informal enquiries can be sent to Dr. Shaoxiong Ji (shaoxiong.ji@utu.fi) with the subject line [FINe-Health Application] Postdoc/PhD - <Your Name>. Please prepare the following attachments:
- A Cover Letter (1 page) explaining your motivation and how your research interests align with the project.
- A detailed Curriculum Vitae (CV) including a list of publications or relevant projects.