PhD fellow position linked to the project “Adaptive Multi-Modal Foundation Models: Personalization, Efficiency, and Interpretability (AMPLE)”

Is the Job related to staff position within a Research Infrastructure? No

Offer Description

PRE-DOCTORAL FELLOWSHIP

The Computer Vision Center (CVC) offers ONE pre-doctoral research fellowships.

1. General Rules:

The object of this call is the selection of ONE candidate to work as pre-doctoral researcher in the CVC. This selection process is subject to Law 14/2011, of 1 June, of Science, Technology and Innovation, by the CVC Statutes where applicable and the rest of the applicable labor law.

This call is funded by the AEI and the ESF+ and the definitive award of predoctoral contracts for the training of doctors, following the indications of article 12 of the call “Proyectos de Generación de Conocimiento 2025“.

2. Outline of the fellowship:

The CVC offers one pre-doctoral fellowship linked to the project “Adaptive Multi-Modal Foundation Models: Personalization, Efficiency, and Interpretability (AMPLE)” with reference PID2025-175937NB-I00 funded by MICIU/AEI/10.13039/501100011033. The reference of the fellowship is PREP2025-003426.

This call has been entrusted by the Agencia Estatal de Investigación (AEI) to the Computer Vision Center by the Subprograma Estatal de Formación, within the Plan Estatal de Investigación Científica y Técnica y de Innovación 2024-2027, and is carried out under Order CIN/1025/2022, of 27 October, published in the BOE of 29 October 2025, approving the regulatory bases for the award of a public grant for the formalization of a predoctoral contract, corresponding to various programs and subprograms of the said Plan.

3. Candidates’ Requirements and Description of the Job:

• Candidates should not have benefited from a pre-doctoral contract for more than 12 months prior to the submission of the application.
• Candidates will have to comply with all the accession requirements to a PhD program at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB) when accepting the grant.

Job Description

Job title

PhD fellow position linked to the project “Adaptive Multi-Modal Foundation Models: Personalization, Efficiency, and Interpretability (AMPLE)” with reference PID2025-175937NB-I00.

Dedication

Full time, 4-year grant (annual evaluation)

Supervisors

Joost van de Weijer and Bogdan Raducanu

Background

The selected candidate will work in the Computer Vision Centre (CVC), Barcelona, a research institute comprising more than 130 researchers and support staff, dedicated to computer vision research and knowledge transfer, with an excellent research production. With a strong international projection and links to the industry, the Computer Vision Centre offers an exciting environment for scientific career development. The Computer Vision Centre has a plan for expansion of its permanent research staff base and has received the “HR Excellence in Research” award as a provider and supporter of a stimulating and favorable working environment. The successful candidate will be joining the Learning and Machine Perception Group (LAMP). The group performance researches lifelong learning, continual learning, domain adaptation, agentic AI, model merging, generative models for images, and transfer learning.

Summary of the project

Foundation models (FMs) have driven a paradigm shift in artificial intelligence by enabling strong generalization across tasks and modalities, with multimodal foundation models (MM-FMs) such as CLIP and text-to-image diffusion models becoming central to modern AI systems. A key strength of these models lies in their ability to be adapted efficiently to new users, domains, or skills. However, such adaptations, whether through fine-tuning, personalization, or alignment, lead to degradation of previously acquired capabilities, a phenomenon closely related to catastrophic forgetting. While continual learning (CL) provides a theoretical and algorithmic framework to address this issue, existing CL research has largely focused on small, single-modal models trained from scratch. Extending continual learning theory and methods to large-scale, multi-modal foundation models raises fundamentally new challenges, including the need for parameter-efficient continual adaptation, the characterization of novel multi-modal forgetting mechanisms such as cross-modal interference and misalignment, and the lack of interpretable diagnostics to assess risks introduced during model updates.

Description of the job

The candidate will perform a PhD on the topic of the project. The candidate is expected to contribute to development of personalized multi-model agents which can efficiently adapt to new users or domains. The research direction will focus on continual learning theory within agentic AI. This could include topics like: optimal usage of memory capabilities (replay buffer, context, long term memory, and RAG systems) for lifelong learning, multi-agent personalization or domain adaptation. It is expected that the candidate will also collaborate in tasks related to the development of the research project and will present and publish the research results in top international conferences and journals.

Specific requirements

The candidate should hold an MSc degree in Computer Vision, Artificial Intelligence, Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or a closely related field. Candidates should have prior knowledge of and practical experience with deep learning. Familiarity with agentic AI and continual learning theory will be considered an advantage during the evaluation process. A track record of scientific publications is desirable and will be considered an asset. Applicants are expected to have excellent written and spoken English communication skills. They should be able to work effectively as part of a team while also demonstrating initiative, independence, and the ability to work autonomously.

Selection Committee

Joost van de Weijer and Bogdan Raducanu

4. Duration of the fellowship:

The fellowship has a maximum duration of 4 years, and it’s carried out through a pre-doctoral contract. If the pre-doctoral fellow obtains his/her PhD title before the start of the 4th year of the fellowship, he/she will be authorized to be hired this last year as a post-doctoral researcher with a raise in the salary, higher than in the pre-doctoral phase.

At the end of each fellowship year, the fellow will have to submit a work report, stating the objectives and work plan of the following year, as well as a positive report from his/her thesis director. The renewal of the fellowship for the following year is subject to the positive review of the academic committee of the PhD program. The contract can be terminated if the evaluation is negative.

5. Payment and eligible expenses in accordance to the AEI:

The grant will finance the contract (gross salary and employer’s social security contribution), compensation costs at the end of the contract (if applicable) and additional funding to cover the expenses for research stays and enrolment fees of the doctoral studies, in accordance with the provisions of the call. The final amounts of the grant will be confirmed in the final resolution of the call.

As stated in the “Provisional resolution proposal of the 2025 grant concession to the Generacion de Conocimiento projects and the actions for the training of Predoctoral researchers associated to the aforementioned projects” and within the framework of the Programa Estatal para la Investigación y el Desarrollo Experimental, del Plan Estatal de Investigación Científica, Técnica y de Innovación 2024-2027, the provisional amounts of the grant can be viewed at the following link: CALL FPI95-CVC

* Selected fellows will receive a gross annual salary of 25,456 €, in accordance with the provisions of the public call. The gross salary is subject to the corresponding statutory deductions, including the employee’s personal income tax (IRPF) and social security contributions.

In Spain, the net salary is obtained by deducting from the gross amount the corresponding income tax (IRPF) and employee social security contributions, both of which may vary annually depending on government regulations, income level, personal circumstances, and region. The resulting amount after these deductions constitutes the net salary received by the fellow.

In addition to the researcher’s gross salary, the grant provides funding to cover the employer’s social security contributions. For this purpose, the host institution will receive annual funding of €31,100 per contract, as established in the official call.

The salary will be updated, where applicable, in accordance with the regulations governing predoctoral research contracts. In any case, the remuneration may not be lower than 75% of the salary established for equivalent categories under the applicable collective agreement, nor lower than the annual minimum wage legally in force.

6. Incorporation:

The start of the contract will depend on the final resolution of the AEI project, not coming into force until it is resolved and it is possible to allocate expenses to it. According to the call, the CVC will have 9 months to hire the candidate. Therefore, if the final resolution is announced in November 2026, the expected start date of the fellowship will be between 1 December 2026 to 1 August 2027. It is mandatory that the contract starts on the first day of the month.

7. Incompatibilities:

This fellowship is not compatible with any other fellowship or grant that has the same objective and is financed with public or private funds; Spanish or European, as well as any wage or salary that involve a contractual or statutory relation.

It could be authorized payments coming from educational tasks (teaching) provided that they have a sporadic and not regular nature. The said payments cannot exceed the 30% of the total fellowship annual amount. The authorization is given by the Director of the CVC.

8. Submission of applications:

Candidates should apply by filling in the online application form. The call will be open from October 1 to October 15, 2026.

Candidates should send a CV and academic record of his/her degree along with a cover letter. The grades obtained in the courses should be included in the academic record. When submitting documents issued by foreign education centers, these should be submitted in accordance with the UAB PhD program requirements. You can only upload one file that should include all required documents.

Applications will be screened for eligibility as they arrive. If the application is incomplete or with mistakes that could be corrected, candidates will be contacted and informed that they will have to correct the said mistakes or missing documents within the next 5 days. In the case the mistakes are not corrected within the given period, the submission will be considered ineligible, and it will be excluded from being reviewed by the committee.

The list with the definitive candidates will be published on the CVC website and the selected candidate will be contacted by email.

9. Evaluation criteria:

Applications will be evaluated by the selection committee, which includes the IPs of the project.

A maximum of 100 points will be awarded to the following criteria:

Criterion and Points

1) Academic and/or scientific-technical trajectory of the candidate.

1.a) Scientific-technical contributions: The academic record and other curricular merits of the candidate will be evaluated, as well as their suitability for the tasks to be carried out based on their training and professional experience. 0 to 45 points

1.b) Mobility and internationalization: The relevance and impact of the candidate's stays in national and international research centers and/or the industrial sector will be assessed, considering the prestige of the hosting entity and the activities carried out there. 0 to 5 points

2) Suitability of the candidate for the research activities to be carried out. The candidate's suitability for the project or research activities will be evaluated based on their previous training and experience. This will include the added value that the completion of the project will bring to their research career, as well as the contribution to the institution and research group. 0 to 50 points

Evaluation of applications:

Applications received until 15 October 2026 will be taken into consideration for evaluation. The resolution of the fellowship will be published on 30 October 2026, and it will name the selected candidate and, if available, a waiting list.

In the case that no candidate is selected on the said date, the process will continue open until the position is filled.

10. Resignation and admission of substitutes

If the resignation of the selected candidate is done before he/she signs the official contract, the substitute candidate can directly occupy the position. The substitute candidate could also be called if the selected candidate does not fulfill all the necessary requirements to be hired.

11. Transition from the pre-doctoral stage to the post-doctoral orientation period.

If the pre-doctoral researcher defends and passes his/her PhD thesis before the start of the last year of the fellowship, previous confirmation of the defense of the thesis as well as passing it, the post-doctoral contract would be made official. These contracts will be full-time and will last for one year with a salary as established in section 5.

12. Modifications

The modification of the initial conditions of the fellowship and the period of time for its execution should be authorized by the CVC, who can request any information deemed suitable.

13. Interruptions

The following situations will not be considered as part of the contract: temporary disability, pregnancy risk, maternity leave or leave for adoption or foster care, risk during lactation and paternity leave. In these cases, the candidate can request the recovery of this time at least 2 months prior to the end of the contract. In order to calculate the suspension period, the beneficiary entities should send to the CVC the certification or accreditation of the corresponding registration and cancellation. The recovery period will be performed at the end of the last year and for the period of time that has been justified by the beneficiary entity.

Any other interruption situation of the fellowship that is not contemplated in this section shall be communicated and approved by the thesis supervisor and will be evaluated by the CVC board of direction that will have to give its conformity and set forth the conditions together with the thesis director.

14. Breach of contract

The total or partial unfulfillment of the requirements and obligation established in this resolution and other applicable laws, as we as the conditions that, in its case, established in the corresponding resolution award, will in turn produce, previous creation of a breach of contract file, the loss of the right of the fellowship.

Bellaterra, 30 September 2026

Josep Lladós Canet

DIRECTOR COMPUTER VISION CENTER

Where to apply

Website: https://www.cvc.uab.es/blog/2026/10/01/call-fpi95-cvc/

Requirements

• Research Field: Computer science
• Education Level: Master Degree or equivalent

Additional Information

Selection process

OTM-R principles for selection processes

The CVC is committed to Open Transparent and Merit-based Recruitment (OTM-R) for any potential candidate in all our processes. In 2015 we received the Human Resources Strategy for Researchers (HRS4R) award. In October 2022, the CVC successfully completed the accreditation renewal process after an on-site visit and evaluation by EU experts.

Through an extensive and continuous process, we improve the conditions and opportunities at CVC. With these actions, the CVC is committed to the principles of the European Charter for Researchers, as well as the Code of Conduct for the Recruitment of Researchers. For more information follow this link.

Work Location(s)

• Number of offers available: 1
• Company/Institute: Computer Vision Center
• Country: Spain

Contact

• State/Province: Barcelona
• City: Cerdanyola del Valles
• Website: http://www.cvc.uab.es
• Street: Campus UAB, Edificio O Bellaterra
• Postal Code: 08193