Research Associate, School of Computing

Job Description

The National University of Singapore invites applications for the position of Research Associate in the Department of Computer Science, School of Computing (SoC). SoC is strongly committed to research excellence in all its dimensions: Searching for fundamental results and insights, developing novel computational solutions to a wide range of applications, building large-scale experimental systems and improving the well-being of society. We seek to play an active role both internationally and locally in the core and emerging areas of Computer Science and Information Systems.

The Research Associate will work closely with the Principal Investigator and lab members on a research project developing trustworthy AI for psychological consultation. The project aims to build reliable AI therapist technologies by combining psychological principles, large language models, privacy-preserving learning and safety-aware system design.

The Research Associate will contribute to one or more of the following research areas:

• Autonomous benchmarking and evaluation of AI therapist responses using computable criteria grounded in psychological principles, professional ethics and local regulatory expectations
• Large language model training, fine-tuning and evaluation for safe, empathetic and reliable psychological consultation support
• Privacy-preserving AI methods for sensitive user reflection data, including federated learning, differential privacy or related secure learning techniques
• Safety-aware inference systems, including real-time monitoring of inappropriate AI responses and detection of high-risk user language for escalation to human experts
• Experimental design, statistical evaluation, dataset construction, system implementation and preparation of technical reports or research publications

Job Requirements

• A Master’s degree in Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence, Computing, Data Science, Information Systems or a closely related area;
• Strong programming ability in Python and experience with machine learning or large language model development;
• Experience with natural language processing, trustworthy AI, AI safety, privacy-preserving machine learning, federated learning, data mining, human-centered AI or related areas will be advantageous;
• Good analytical, communication and technical writing skills, with the ability to work collaboratively in an interdisciplinary research environment.