CS PhD Roundup — September 14, 2026: 2 active calls closing September 18 and 21

The September 8–14, 2026 screening scan found no newly posted adverts that cleared both the named-advisor and recent top-conference author screens. Two major European research calls remain actionable this week with imminent closing dates: the University of Vienna's three-person PhD cohort in responsible machine learning closes on September 18, and ELLIS Institute Finland's autumn recruitment for postdocs and doctoral students closes on September 21. 1 2

Quick triage

Institution	Position & Unit	Key Advisor(s)	Direction	Deadline	Direct Application
University of Vienna	3 PhD Researchers (30h/wk)	Martin Pawelczyk	Responsible AI, data attribution, machine unlearning	September 18, 2026	Vienna Job Portal
ELLIS Institute Finland	Multiple PhD (4y) & Postdocs (3y)	Jörg Tiedemann, Samuel Kaski, Aki Vehtari	Foundation models, multilingual NLP, probabilistic ML	September 21, 2026 (15:59 UTC-05:00)	Postdoc Portal / PhD Portal

Responsible AI

University of Vienna: Martin Pawelczyk

Fit. The Responsible Machine Learning Group focuses on foundational and applied questions in AI safety and data-centric machine learning. Priority topics include data attribution, data curation, privacy guarantees, machine unlearning in large foundation models, multi-agent LLM safety, and mechanistic interpretability. The group suits applicants with solid mathematical preparation who want to design theoretically grounded algorithms for trustworthy systems. 1

Martin Pawelczyk joined the University of Vienna following postdoctoral work at Harvard University. His publications include Train Once, Answer All: Many Pretraining Experiments for the Cost of One at ICLR 2026, Efficiently Verifiable Proofs of Data Attribution at NeurIPS 2025, and Machine Unlearning Fails to Remove Data Poisoning Attacks at ICLR 2025. 3 4

Role and application. The department is hiring a founding cohort of three PhD researchers under Job ID 6159. The positions carry a 30-hour weekly appointment under the Austrian collective bargaining agreement classification §48 VwGr. B1 Grundstufe, with a gross monthly salary of €3,776.10 on a full-time equivalent basis paid 14 times per year. Contracts run for up to four years, starting with an initial 1.5-year term that automatically extends to three years upon successful first-year review. 1

Applicants need a completed or near-completed Master's degree in computer science, machine learning, mathematics, physics, statistics, or a related quantitative field. Strong Python programming skills and familiarity with deep learning frameworks such as PyTorch or JAX are required. Experience with distributed model training, SLURM cluster workflows, and prior workshop or conference submissions strengthen the application. 1

Submit your academic CV, cover letter specifying your earliest start date, Master's thesis copy or extended abstract, and official university transcripts through the University of Vienna portal by September 18, 2026. An optional candidate form is available at the group's intake link, and enquiries can be directed to martin.pawelczyk@univie.ac.at. 1

Lab signal. As founding members of the group, successful applicants contribute directly to defining team workflows and research priorities. Doctoral students join the Vienna Doctoral School of Computer Science and conclude their formal doctoral thesis agreement within 12 months. 1

Foundational and Multilingual AI

ELLIS Institute Finland: Autumn 2026 Cohort

Fit. ELLIS Institute Finland is recruiting across fundamental and applied machine learning topics in partnership with Aalto University, the University of Helsinki, and partner Finnish institutions. Research themes cover multilingual language models, data-efficient probabilistic machine learning, amortized inference, generative modeling, human-in-the-loop collaborative AI, and AI for health. Applicants can apply for traditional academic research tracks or an entrepreneurial postdoc track geared toward technology spinoffs. 2

The call connects candidates with institute faculty and network supervisors who have verified publication records at the channel's target conferences. Named supervisors include Prof. Jörg Tiedemann, co-author of the ACL 2026 Findings study Data-Centric Continual Pre-training for 500+ Languages: A New Bilingual Translation Corpus and Multilingual Models, founding director Prof. Samuel Kaski, who published on surrogate-assisted federated learning at NeurIPS 2024, and Prof. Aki Vehtari, working on probabilistic modeling and Bayesian analysis. 5 6 7

Role and application. The call covers multiple fully funded appointments. Doctoral contracts run for four years by default, while postdoctoral appointments are typically funded for up to three years. Salaries adhere to the Finnish university pay scale and include occupational health coverage and national pension benefits. Appointees gain direct access to EuroHPC LUMI, one of the world's fastest supercomputers, alongside national clusters and over 260 local NVIDIA GPU accelerators. 2

Candidates need a relevant Master's degree for doctoral positions or a PhD for postdoctoral roles in computer science, statistics, mathematics, or electrical engineering. Demonstrated performance in core coursework or publications in top-tier machine-learning venues is expected. The application dossier requires a 1–2 page cover letter specifying target supervisors and research alignment, an academic CV, a list of publications highlighting up to five key papers, degree certificates and transcripts, and contact information for 2–3 academic referees. 2

Applications close on September 21, 2026 at 23:59 EEST, which corresponds to 15:59 UTC-05:00 on September 21 for readers in the channel timezone. Candidates should submit via Workday using the ELLIS Postdoc Portal (job reference R47586) or the ELLIS Doctoral Portal (job reference R47606). General questions can be sent to contact@ellisinstitute.fi. 2

Lab signal. ELLIS Institute Finland operates as the second dedicated institute in the European Laboratory for Learning and Intelligent Systems network. Appointees collaborate across Finnish universities and European ELLIS units, participating in shared doctoral seminars, cross-site research exchanges, and Finland's national AI-DOC network. 2

Screened-out leads from the weekly scan

To save applicants time, several prominent machine learning vacancies placed between September 8 and September 14 were evaluated and excluded from the main queue:

Manchester Metropolitan University — Low-Resource LLMs PhD Studentship (Ref: SciEng-DTA Jan 2027-SA-Low-Resource LLMs). Placed on September 9 with an October 4 deadline, this role investigates adaptive architectures for typologically diverse languages under Dr. Seun Ajao. While Dr. Ajao published at EACL 2026, his official research record lacks qualifying primary authorship at NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR, CVPR, or ACL. 8 9
University of Oxford — Postdoctoral Research Assistant in AI (Ref: 187800 / DSW143). Placed on September 8 with a September 21 deadline, this vacancy supports foundation models and predictive analytics for pandemic preparedness under the Horizon Europe PANDAI project. It was excluded because the public listing represents a broad institutional consortium call without a named supervising principal investigator. 10

Deadline watch

University of Vienna — September 18, 2026. Submit your CV, motivation letter, thesis abstract, and official transcripts through the Vienna portal first, ensuring your cover letter specifies your earliest start date. 1
ELLIS Institute Finland — September 21, 2026 (15:59 UTC-05:00). Assemble your two-page motivation letter naming preferred faculty supervisors, curate up to five key publications with direct links, and confirm availability with your 2–3 academic referees before uploading via Workday. 2