WASP Industrial PhD Student Projects 2025

Wallenberg AI, Autonomous Systems and Software Program (WASP) is Sweden’s largest ever individual research program, a major national initiative for strategically motivated basic research, education and faculty recruitment. The program addresses research on artificial intelligence and autonomous systems acting in collaboration with humans, adapting to their environment through sensors, information and knowledge, and forming intelligent systems-of-systems. The vision of WASP is Excellent research and competence in artificial intelligence, autonomous systems and software for the benefit of Swedish industry.

The graduate school within WASP is dedicated to providing the skills needed to analyze, develop, and contribute to the interdisciplinary area of artificial intelligence, autonomous systems and software. Through an ambitious program with research visits, partner universities, and visiting lecturers, the graduate school actively supports forming a strong multi-disciplinary and international professional network between PhD students, researchers, and industry. The graduate school provides added value on top of the existing PhD programs at the partner universities, providing unique opportunities for students who are dedicated to achieving international research excellence with industrial relevance. Further information about WASP Graduate School can be found here.

Open positions within AI, Autonomous systems and Software

We are now offering up to 15 industrial doctoral student projects within AI, Autonomous systems and Software at the five partner universities Chalmers, KTH, Linköping University, Lund University and Umeå University as well as at the Affiliated Groups of Excellence at Örebro University, Uppsala University and Luleå University of Technology. The industrial partner should have research activities in Sweden.

The projects are expected to address fundamental research problems within any of WASP’s research areas and expect to have a strong visionary and novelty nature, i.e., not only application development.

You can submit an application for a single PhD candidate, or an application for 2 candidates, if at least one of the candidates is of the underrepresented gender. Should you submit an application for two candidates, the application form needs to be completed with the additional candidate’s name and CV. A 2 PhD student application should also clearly describe what each of the students will do within the project and how they complement each other in the project.

WASP has an ambition to have a wide coverage of PhD student projects established as well as emerging areas within the WASP domain, and with supervisors at different stages of academic seniority. Improving gender balance is also a pronounced goal for WASP. In view of this we encourage junior researchers and researchers of underrepresented genders to submit proposals in response to this call.

The evaluation criteria for the call includes:

• The academic qualifications of the industrial PhD candidate.
• The industrial relevance and impact of the project.
• The scientific quality of the project.
• Potential to collaborate with other WASP initiatives such as WARA.
• The industrial and academic qualifications of the industrial and the academic supervisors as well as their potential to support the candidate and the project.
• Diversity of the applicants, for example gender and age.

Guidelines for WASP Industrial doctoral student positions

There is a set of guidelines for WASP Industrial PhD students that is important to consider during the application process. The guidelines (in Swedish) can be found here.

More information is found in the FAQ on industrial PhD studies in WASP.

Application process

The application should be written using the application template below and submitted jointly by the industry and university partners. All parts of the application, including requested CVs as stated in the template, should be submitted as a single file to WASP’s application portal EasyChair no later than 2025-10-01, 14:00.

Download Application template WASP Industrial PhD student

Link to the application portal EasyChair will be published shortly.

Once you have logged in to EasyChair, you will be asked to select the track relevant for your submission. Select WASP Industrial PhD 2025.

Each industrial supervisor may submit at most one application.

Information and guidance

An informational webinar regarding the call was held on May 27. The recording and presentation slides are available below.

For further information please contact:

Timetable