CS Top-Conference PhD Recruitment Roundup — Week of June 15, 2026

Coverage window: June 8–15, 2026. One new position clears the top-venue bar this week — a postdoc opening in Christoph Lampert's Machine Learning and Computer Vision group at ISTA (Institute of Science and Technology Austria), with a rolling deadline and salary starting at €73,500/year. Four previously listed positions close between June 16 and June 21; all four were re-verified open as of today. One position (INRIA Grenoble, Thomas Hueber) expired on June 12 and its listing has been removed.

Scan coverage this week: ISTA group pages, jobs.inria.fr, jobbnorge.no, academicpositions.fr, meo-lab.com, Nature Careers, University of Vienna jobs portal. Deadline re-verification completed for all six previously tracked positions.

At a glance — all active positions

Deadline	Advisor(s)	Institution	Sub-field	Type
June 16 ⚠️	Sebastian Tschiatschek	University of Vienna	IRL, safe/aligned AI	PhD
June 17 ⚠️	Robert Jenssen + 4 co-PIs	UiT Arctic Institute of AI, Norway	Deep learning for climate & remote sensing	PhD (×5)
June 18 ⚠️	Mathias Verbeke	KU Leuven, Bruges	Causal ML for industrial root cause analysis	PhD
June 21	Giovanni Neglia & Chuan Xu	INRIA Sophia Antipolis, France	Federated learning, privacy/security	PhD
Rolling	Christoph H. Lampert	ISTA, Klosterneuburg (near Vienna)	Trustworthy ML, transfer learning, neuro-symbolic AI	Postdoc (×2)
Rolling	Marc Rußwurm	University of Bonn, Germany	Implicit neural representations, earth observation	PhD (×2)

New this week — trustworthy ML and neuro-symbolic AI (postdoc)

Multiple postdoc positions — Christoph H. Lampert group, ISTA

Deadline: Rolling — open until filled

The ISTA Machine Learning and Computer Vision (CVML) group, led by Prof. Christoph H. Lampert (ELLIS Fellow and Unit Director; h-index 54, 26,000+ citations 1), is recruiting one to two postdocs across three research clusters:

Trustworthy ML — privacy, fairness, robustness, federated learning, LLM security
Transfer and continual learning — multi-task, domain adaptation, meta-learning, lifelong learning
Neuro-symbolic AI — combining formal logic, structured reasoning, and knowledge representations with neural networks

The group had 13 publications at NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR, or CVPR between 2022 and 2025. 2

ML researcher at dual monitors with neural network visualizations, glass-walled research institute with alpine mountains in background — AI-generated illustration of a machine learning research lab in an Alpine setting — evocative of ISTA's location in Klosterneuburg, Austria.

Compensation and working conditions:

ISTA postdoc salaries are set by Austria's collective agreement and published on the ISTA postdoc office page. 3 The three 2026 salary levels are:

Level	Annual salary	Structure
PD1	€73,500	Entry
PD2	€76,986	Mid
PD3	€80,472	Senior

Salaries are paid 14 times per year (12 months plus two bonus payments that cover overtime). Benefits include 25 working days of annual leave, no mandatory teaching (voluntary PhD-course teaching is encouraged but not required), state-of-the-art compute resources, and conference travel funding. 3

Research environment:

ISTA is a public research institute in Klosterneuburg, about 18 km north of central Vienna and 30 minutes by direct train from Vienna Spittelau station. The institute describes itself as dedicated to "curiosity-driven basic research." Postdocs in the Lampert group may co-affiliate with other ELLIS Unit Vienna groups, including Alistarh (distributed computing and optimization), Mondelli (information theory), Locatello (causal learning), Bronstein (geometric deep learning), Henzinger (formal methods), and Robinson (biology and ML). 4

Application materials:

Submit a single PDF to chl(at)ist.ac.at with: CV, research statement, full publication list, academic transcripts, and contact details for three references. Female candidates are specifically encouraged to apply. 1

Field	Details
Position type	Postdoc (100% research, no mandatory teaching)
Institution	ISTA, Klosterneuburg, Austria
Advisor	Prof. Christoph H. Lampert
Contract length	1–2 years
Salary	€73,500–€80,472/year (14 payments)
Requirements	PhD in ML or related area; strong math and programming; publications at NeurIPS / ICML / ICLR / JMLR / TPAMI / ML
Deadline	Rolling — positions filled as applications arrive
Start date	Flexible
Application	Single PDF → chl(at)ist.ac.at

Also at ISTA: The Causal Learning and AI group led by Prof. Francesco Locatello currently has multiple PhD and postdoc positions open as well. 5 No separate listing page was available as of June 15 — direct inquiry via Francesco.Locatello@ist.ac.at is the application path.

ISTA-Fellow program: ISTA also runs a structured two-year postdoc fellowship (ISTA-Fellow) with a minimum salary of €73,500/year and full social security coverage. The 2026 cycle closes September 8, 2026 and requires a separate application via apply.ista.ac.at. 6

Imminent deadlines — June 16 through June 21

June 16 — IRL and safe/aligned AI · University of Vienna

Deadline: June 16, 2026 — tomorrow

The University of Vienna PhD position supervised by Prof. Sebastian Tschiatschek (Probabilistic and Interactive Machine Learning group, Faculty of Computer Science, Research Group Data Mining and Machine Learning) was re-verified open on June 15. 7 This position has already received one 10-day extension (from June 6 to June 16); no further extension has been posted.

Research focus: Inverse Reinforcement Learning (IRL), exploration in RL, and safe/aligned AI. The Vienna position is one of the few currently tracked openings with an explicit safe-AI mandate.

Field	Details
Position type	Predoctoral university assistant (PhD)
Contract	4 years, 30 hours/week
Salary	€3,776.10/month gross
Start date	October 1, 2026
Location	Vienna, Austria
Deadline	June 16, 2026
Apply	jobs.univie.ac.at (job ID 5376) / nature.com/naturecareers (job ID 12859459)
Contact	sebastian.tschiatschek@univie.ac.at

June 17 — Deep learning for climate and remote sensing · UiT The Arctic University of Norway

Deadline: June 17, 2026 — two days away

The [AI]² Arctic Institute for AI at UiT The Arctic University of Norway (Tromsø) is filling up to five PhD fellowships in machine learning at once (view listing on Jobbnorge). 8 The [AI]² institute is a new strategic initiative embedded in the Visual Intelligence Research Centre (SFI, Norwegian Research Council grant no. 309439).

Three thematic tracks:

Track A (2–3 positions): Microclimate modeling and forecasting for aviation and UAV operations — physics-informed neural networks, self-supervised foundation models
Track B (1–2 positions): Situational awareness using satellite, UAV, and ocean sensor data — multimodal AI, uncertainty quantification
Track C (1 position): Infrastructure monitoring — interpretability, robust AI

Lead PI Prof. Robert Jenssen has seven verified publications at NeurIPS (2022), CVPR (2023 ×2), ICLR (2024 ×2), ICML (2024), and ICML (2025). 9 Co-PIs include Assoc. Prof. Michael Kampffmeyer, Assoc. Prof. Kristoffer Wickstrøm, Assoc. Prof. Qing Liu, and Assoc. Prof. Elisabeth Wetzer.

The listing sets an explicit problem-first research ethos: "The main aim is not to develop a favorite 'AI hammer' for then to look for problems this tool may help solve. Rather, the aim is to identify particularly important problems to solve, for then to contribute to the development of particularly promising AI methodology suited for helping provide solutions for these real world problems." 8

Glass research building with satellite dishes on the roof, set against snow-covered fjord mountains under northern lights — AI-generated illustration of an Arctic research facility — evocative of the [AI]² institute's operating environment in Tromsø, Norway.

Field	Details
Position type	PhD Fellowship (up to 5 across three tracks)
Duration	3 years
Salary	550,800 NOK/year (~€47,000), 3% annual increase
Location	Tromsø, Norway (above Arctic Circle)
Deadline	June 17, 2026
Apply	jobbnorge.no job ID 302170
Contact	robert.jenssen@uit.no

June 18 — Causal ML for industrial root cause analysis · KU Leuven

Deadline: June 18, 2026 at 23:59 Europe/Brussels

The KU Leuven Bruges Campus is recruiting a PhD candidate in causal ML for industrial root cause analysis, supervised by Prof. Mathias Verbeke (M-Group, embedded in the DTAI — Declarative Languages and Artificial Intelligence — lab). 10 The project is part of CausAICA, a research program funded by Flanders Make (Flanders' strategic research centre for the manufacturing industry).

The central research challenge: "to automatically learn why failures occur from heterogeneous industrial data." 10 Methods combine constraint-based, Bayesian, and gradient-based causal discovery on multimodal industrial time-series.

The Flanders Make connection is worth weighing: the industrial mandate shapes the daily research focus and post-PhD trajectory toward applied, manufacturing-adjacent roles — applicants who prefer a theory-forward environment should factor that in.

Field	Details
Position type	PhD scholarship (4 years, fully funded)
Location	Bruges, Belgium
Supervisor	Prof. Mathias Verbeke, M-Group / DTAI lab
Deadline	June 18, 2026, 23:59 Europe/Brussels
Apply	Online form via Academic Positions listing

June 21 — Federated learning security · INRIA Sophia Antipolis

Deadline: June 21, 2026

The INRIA Sophia Antipolis NEO team is recruiting a PhD candidate to study privacy attacks and defenses in federated and distributed ML training with malicious clients. 11 Supervisors are Dr. Giovanni Neglia and Dr. Chuan Xu (both INRIA), with industry co-supervisor Dr. Igor Carrara of Hivenet/Antimatter (Cannes). INRIA (Institut National de Recherche en Informatique et en Automatique) is the French national research institute for digital science; the NEO Team at Sophia Antipolis focuses on network optimization and federated learning. The position is part of the Inria–Hivenet Challenge "Cupseli."

The three research objectives run in sequence: (1) advancing gradient-based privacy attacks capable of extracting richer private information than class-level labels; (2) studying stealthy poisoning attacks where the adversary must keep updates small enough to evade anomaly detectors; (3) designing defenses combining robust aggregation, anomaly detection, and privacy-preserving training. 11

Federated ML network — glowing hexagonal nodes connected by encrypted data streams, one node highlighted in amber with a warning symbol representing a malicious client — AI-generated illustration of a federated learning system with an adversarial threat model. View full position listing on INRIA Jobs

Security requirement: The position is located in a Zone à Régime Restrictif (ZRR) — a French government-designated restricted research area — meaning national security clearance may be required. 11 An adverse ministerial decision on this clearance cancels the appointment. Applicants who are not French nationals — or whose home country may trigger additional review — should contact INRIA before investing time in the application.

Field	Details
Position type	PhD (36-month contract)
Stipend	€2,300/month gross
Start date	October 1, 2026
Location	Sophia Antipolis, France
Security	ZRR clearance may apply (French national security review)
Deadline	June 21, 2026
Apply	jobs.inria.fr — offer 2026-10076

Rolling deadline — implicit neural representations in earth observation

University of Bonn — MEO-Lab, Marc Rußwurm

The MEO-Lab (Machine Learning in Earth Observation), led by Dr. Marc Rußwurm (DFG Emmy Noether Research Group "Earth Embeddings," co-funded by the Taylor Geospatial Institute), has one to two doctoral researcher positions open with no fixed closing date. 12

Research: "geospatial neural fields: continuous, queryable and uncertainty-aware representations of the planet that encode location, time, scale, sensor modality and environmental context." 12 The lab sits at the University of Bonn, which holds German University of Excellence status.

Position: full-time TV-L E13; target start date late summer 2026. Apply via Tally form at tally.so/r/LZk0Qy (single PDF: cover letter + CV). Rußwurm is on parental leave through September 2026, so initial email responses will be slower than usual — the listing and application form remain active. 12

Expired this cycle

INRIA Grenoble — Thomas Hueber, Stéphane Lathuilière, Laurent Girin (multimodal speech language models)

Original deadline: June 12, 2026. The listing page (jobs.inria.fr/public/classic/en/offres/2026-10080) now returns 404. 13 No extension or replacement posting was found. This position (first listed in the May 18 issue) is closed.

Complete deadline table — all tracked positions

Deadline	Advisor(s)	Institution	Sub-field	Type	First listed
June 16 ⚠️ tomorrow	Sebastian Tschiatschek	University of Vienna, Austria	IRL, safe/aligned AI	PhD	June 1
June 17 ⚠️	Robert Jenssen et al.	UiT [AI]² Arctic Institute, Norway	Deep learning, climate/remote sensing	PhD ×5	June 1
June 18 ⚠️	Mathias Verbeke	KU Leuven, Bruges, Belgium	Causal ML, industrial root cause analysis	PhD	May 18
June 21	Giovanni Neglia & Chuan Xu	INRIA Sophia Antipolis, France	Federated learning, privacy/security	PhD	June 8
Rolling	Christoph H. Lampert	ISTA, Klosterneuburg, Austria	Trustworthy ML, transfer learning, neuro-symbolic AI	Postdoc ×2	This issue
Rolling	Marc Rußwurm	University of Bonn, Germany	Implicit neural representations, earth observation	PhD ×2	June 1
~~June 12~~ ❌ expired	Thomas Hueber, Lathuilière, Girin	INRIA Grenoble, France	Multimodal speech language models	PhD	May 18

Notes for applicants

Vienna / Tschiatschek closes tomorrow (June 16). The stipend at €3,776.10/month gross is the highest fixed monthly figure among any currently tracked European PhD position — and this is the final window. A second extension has not been posted. Contact: sebastian.tschiatschek@univie.ac.at. 7

UiT / Jenssen closes June 17 — five slots, three distinct tracks. Track A (microclimate modeling) fits applicants with physics or atmospheric science backgrounds; Track B (satellite/UAV situational awareness) fits CV or multimodal ML specialists; Track C (infrastructure monitoring) is closest to applied ML and interpretability. Tromsø sits above the Arctic Circle — location matters for this role, as field data collection is relevant to several tracks. 8

KU Leuven / Verbeke closes June 18 at 23:59 Brussels time — a hard timestamp. This is not an end-of-business cutoff. The CausAICA industrial mandate is a real constraint on research focus; applicants who prefer theory-forward work should weigh that before applying. 10

INRIA Sophia Antipolis / Neglia & Xu closes June 21 — the most time remaining among the four imminent positions. The ZRR security clearance note has not been modified or removed from the listing. Non-French-national applicants should get explicit clearance confirmation from INRIA before submitting. 11

ISTA / Lampert postdoc is the one new qualifying opening this week. Rolling deadlines at well-resourced groups close without notice once positions fill. If trustworthy ML or neuro-symbolic AI is your research direction and you have NeurIPS/ICML/ICLR/JMLR-level publications, this is worth submitting now rather than queuing. 1

No new NLP/LLM or RL/robotics positions appeared this week. Coverage gaps in both sub-fields persist. The CopeNLU lab (University of Copenhagen; Augenstein & Atanasova) expired on May 31 — monitoring that lab's news feed for future postings under the same DFF grant remains the best available NLP lead in the current tracked pool.

Cover image: AI-generated illustration.