1 PhD Student position in Sociology at the Department of Humanities, Social and Political Sciences in Switzerland | ETH Zürich

Prof. Helbing’s Chair of Sociology at ETH Zurich, in particular of Modeling and Simulation, hosts a team bringing together sociologists, physicists, mathematicians, economists, political scientists, and computer scientists to work on fundamental scientific questions regarding socially interactive systems using quantitative approaches. In particular, the team uses a combination of formal modeling, simulation, data mining, and behavioral experiments to understand the way our society works. We are looking for:

1 PhD-Student

preferably with a background in computer science or physics for the ambitious ERC Advanced Investigator Grant "Momentum – Modeling the Emergence of Social Complexity and Order: How Individual and Societal Complexity Co-Evolve".

The Momentum project is about creating emergent social intelligence based on computational evolution and learning. It aims to model and simulate social interactions between sophisticated agents with cognitive capabilities and the resulting complex social dynamics on the macro-level, including phenomena such as self-organization, emergence of cooperation, social norms, and culture. The successful applicant will focus on the more technical, computation-related aspects, but will actively interact with the other team members and should also acquire a high-level understanding of the topic.

The candidate should possess excellent programming skills; experience with modeling, simulation, and/or distributed high-performance computing is a plus. In addition, the applicant should be interested and ideally already have experience in Artificial Intelligence, collective intelligence, Big Data analytics, cognitive modeling, complex systems, genetic algorithms, evolutionary game theory, or similar fields. Excellent English language skills, social skills, team spirit, and international experience are needed, and the candidate should appreciate to work in a highly interdisciplinary and multicultural team.