WASP Industrial Postdoc Positions 2023

Wallenberg AI, Autonomous Systems and Software Program (WASP) is Sweden’s largest individual research program ever, 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 the 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.

An industrial postdoc is a person with a PhD who conduct industrially motivated research in the context of a collaboration between a company and a university research group. The industrial postdoc is 100% employed by the company. The industrial postdoc instrument is primarily aimed at recently graduated PhDs who are considering a career as an industry researcher or at PhDs who are already employed at a company and engaged in research tasks.

Open Industrial Postdoc Positions

We are now (2023-01-16) offering up to 5 industrial postdoc positions 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. It is required that the industrial partner has research activities situated in Sweden.

The duration of an industrial postdoc project is two years. In the selection priority is given to mobility. Applicants for which the hosting university research group is different from the research group where they conducted PhD studies or, if applicable, their university Postdoc are preferred. The application should be submitted by the hosting company jointly with a university partner. The industrial postdoc candidate should be identified, and all three parties should sign the application. There should be one designated supervisor at the company and one at the university.

The projects are expected to address fundamental research problems with industrial relevance within any of WASPs research areas. The industrial postdoc should share time between the company and the university but be fully engaged in research activities at both sites. The aim is a balanced 50-50 split between the company and the university unless the project can motivate another division of time. However, at least At least 50% of the time should be spent at university and at least 20% of the time should be spent at the company. The total grant over two years is 2.2 Mkr, where 300 000 kr is dedicated to the university host for operational costs and 1.9 Mkr is dedicated to the company for partial funding of salary and other related costs. For SMEs an additional amount is granted and the total grant over two years is 2.7 Mkr, where 300 000 kr is dedicated to the university host for operation costs and 2.4 Mkr is dedicated to the SME for partial funding of salary and other related costs.

For work permit and residence reasons it may be necessary for applicant to submit the application prior to obtaining the PhD. In such cases, a statement from the PhD advisor regarding planned date for defense should be provided.

The evaluation criteria for the call includes:

• The academic qualifications of the industrial postdoc candidate.*
• The industrial relevance of the project.
• The scientific level of the project.
• The industrial and academic qualifications of the industrial and the academic supervisors as well as their potential to support the candidate and the project.
• Mobility, i.e., to what extent the candidate has changed research group between the most recent university appointment and the planned industrial postdoc

*The industrial postdoc candidate must have a PhD degree before starting the industrial postdoc position.

Application process

The application should be written using the application template and submitted jointly by the industry and university partners. All the parts of the application, including requested CVs as stated in the template, should be submitted as a single file to WASP application portal no later than 2023-04-07, 23:59.

Application portal
Once you have logged in, you will be asked to select the track relevant for your submission. Select WASP Industrial Postdoc 2023.

Application template WASP Industrial Postdoc

Information and guidance

There was an information webinar about the call on January 23rd.

For further information please contact:

Timetable