"PostDoc in Human-Centered Multimodal AI for Negotiation Support"

Negotiations involve understanding and managing interpersonal relationships, motivations, and conflicts. While there is existing research on building negotiating agents, there remains a gap to integrate situated understanding of human behavior and how these affect the negotiation process. In this project, you will contribute to the research in building more effective, adaptive, and ethically aware decision-making support in multi-stakeholder negotiations. This project is part of work package 5 of the Red&Blue consortium (https://redblueclimate.nl/) that focuses on climate change in the built environment and aims to co-design and co-develop an Integrative Forum (IF) to facilitate two-way transdisciplinary exchange and dialogue on climate risk management. Within that scope of climate discussions and negotiation, you will develop methods to analyze human behaviors and decision-making processes using multimodal data (text, audio, and/or video), particularly for in-the-wild settings. The technical challenge of the project is to build predictive models that capture both the substance of negotiations and the dynamic patterns of human interaction. The real-life scenarios of Red&Blue introduce unique challenges, including missing or noisy modalities, shifting contexts, and diverse individual preferences. Tackling these challenges calls for advancing adaptive multimodal machine learning approaches that remain robust while engaging with practical concerns of privacy, ethics, and user agency. Throughout this project, you will contribute to data collection experiments for real-life negotiation settings. The postdoctoral researcher will be embedded within the Interactive Intelligence (II) Group at the Intelligent Systems Department at the TU Delft Electrical Engineering, Mathematics, and Computer Science faculty. The environment is open and collaborative and participating in group activities is highly encouraged and appreciated. Consortium meetings and occasional work visits to collaboration partners are foreseen. We embrace an inclusive culture where you can benefit from tailored mentorship and training to promote your professional growth. We are looking for applicants who have or expect to receive a PhD degree before joining the project. Applications should have a relevant track record in multimodal machine learning, preferably in the context of human interactions. Experience in some of the related fields is preferred, e.g., natural language processing, audio and speech processing, or computer vision. Experience with multimodal data collection is a plus. This position is for 1 year for a full-time basis. We are open to part-time constructions. We are also happy to support the candidate in grant applications to extend the position. TU Delft (Delft University of Technology) is built on strong foundations. As creators of the world-famous Dutch waterworks and pioneers in biotech, TU Delft is a top international university combining science, engineering and design. It delivers world class results in education, research and innovation to address challenges in the areas of energy, climate, mobility, health and digital society. For generations, our engineers have proven to be entrepreneurial problem-solvers, both in business and in a social context. At TU Delft we embrace diversity as one of our core values and we actively engage to be a university where you feel at home and can flourish. We value different perspectives and qualities. We believe this makes our work more innovative, the TU Delft community more vibrant and the world more just. Together, we imagine, invent and create solutions using technology to have a positive impact on a global scale. That is why we invite you to apply. Your application will receive fair consideration. The Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science (EEMCS) brings together three scientific disciplines. Combined, they reinforce each other and are the driving force behind the technology we all use in our daily lives. Technology such as the electricity grid, which our faculty is helping to make completely sustainable and future-proof. At the same time, we are developing the chips and sensors of the future, whilst also setting the foundations for the software technologies to run on this new generation of equipment – which of course includes AI. Meanwhile we are pushing the limits of applied mathematics, for example mapping out disease processes using single cell data, and using mathematics to simulate gigantic ash plumes after a volcanic eruption. In other words: there is plenty of room at the faculty for ground-breaking research. We educate innovative engineers and have excellent labs and facilities that underline our strong international position. In total, more than 1000 employees and 4,000 students work and study in this innovative environment. Duration of contract is 1 year. A job of 38-40 hours per week. Salary and benefits are in accordance with the Collective Labour Agreement for Dutch Universities.