PhD fellowship in Artificial Intelligence and the Science of Science: New Frameworks for Interdisciplinary Research Assessment at the Department of Public Health Full-time

PhD Fellowship Opportunity

Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences University of Copenhagen

We are offering a PhD fellowship in “Artificial Intelligence for the Science of Science: New Frameworks for Interdisciplinary Research Assessment” commencing July 1st, 2026, or as soon as possible thereafter.

Our group and research: The Bhatt-Duchene Group is based in the Section for Health Data Science and AI at the University of Copenhagen's Department of Public Health. The group works at the intersection of computer science, mathematics, biology, and epidemiology, developing and applying novel statistical methods and deep learning approaches for global health challenges. The group's research spans disease modelling, genomic analysis, causal inference with machine learning, and deep learning for various health-related domains.

PhD Programme Description: The PhD programme is a three-year full-time research education within the framework of the 5+3 scheme, intended for candidates holding a relevant academic degree within the project's subject area.

Project description: Interdisciplinary science is essential for tackling complex real-world problems, yet there are currently no objective metrics to quantify how interdisciplinary a paper, researcher, or institution truly is. This PhD project will develop novel metrics for evaluating interdisciplinarity by leveraging large language models (LLMs) and citation network analysis. The student will use transformer-based architectures, including sentence encoders and generative models, to compute semantic similarity scores between scientific publications and their citation networks, and aggregate these into interpretable interdisciplinarity measures at the level of individual researchers, departments, and funders. The project spans three work packages: (1) defining the mathematical framework for the new metric, (2) benchmarking neural architectures for generating publication embeddings, and (3) empirical validation using real-world data, including longitudinal analysis of how interdisciplinarity in science has evolved over recent decades. The project sits at the intersection of natural language processing, network science, and science of science research (metascience).

Principal supervisor is Professor Samir Bhatt, Department of Public Health, Email: samir.bhatt@sund.ku.dk

Start: July 1st, 2026

Duration: 3 years as a PhD student [+ 3 months as research assistant for enrolment, if relevant]

Job description: Your key tasks as a PhD student at SUND are:

• Carrying through an independent research project under supervision.
• Completing PhD courses or other equivalent education corresponding to approximately 30 ECTS points.
• Participating in active research environments, including a stay at another research team.
• Obtaining experience with teaching or other types of dissemination related to your PhD project
• Teaching and disseminating your knowledge.
• Writing a PhD thesis on the grounds of your project

Key criteria for the assessment of applicants: Applicants must have qualifications corresponding to a master's degree related to the subject area of the project, e.g. data science, statistics, economics, computer science, computational linguistics, or a related quantitative discipline. Please note that your master's degree must be equivalent to a Danish master's degree (two years).

Other important criteria are:

• The grade point average achieved
• Professional qualifications relevant to the PhD project
• Previous publications
• Relevant work experience
• Other professional activities
• A curious mind-set with a strong interest in natural language processing, scientometrics, and interdisciplinary research
• Language skills

If you have completed your academic education in Denmark, the admission to the PhD programme requires a relevant Master's degree (equivalent to 180 ECTS BSc + 120 ECTS MSc). If you have an academic education from abroad, you must have either a degree equivalent to a Danish master's degree (180 ETCS + 120 ECTS MSc), or at a minimum, a bachelor's degree equivalent to a Danish bachelor's degree (180 ECTS) and be academically qualified at master's level. As part of the assessment of whether you meet the educational requirements, you must also achieve a positive academic evaluation and be assessed as the best qualified for the position.

Place of employment: The place of employment is at the Department of Public Health, Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences, University of Copenhagen. We offer creative and stimulating working conditions in dynamic and international research environment. Our research facilities include modern laboratories and high-performance computing infrastructure with GPU clusters for large-scale analyses.

Terms of employment: The average weekly working hours are 37 hours per week.

The position is a fixed-term position limited to a period of 3 years. The start date is July 1st, 2026.

The employment is conditioned upon the applicant's successful enrolment as a PhD student at the Graduate School at the Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences, University of Copenhagen. This requires submission and acceptance of an application for the specific project formulated by the applicant during an initial three-month employment as a research assistant.

The PhD study must be completed in accordance with The Ministerial Order on the PhD programme (2013) and the Faculty's rules on achieving the degree.

Salary, pension, and terms of employment are in accordance with the agreement between the Ministry of Taxation and The Danish Confederation of Professional Associations on Academics in the State. Depending on seniority, the monthly salary starts at approximately 27,800 DKK/Roughly 3,700 EUR (October 2021 level) plus pension.

Questions: For specific information about the PhD fellowship, please contact the principal supervisor.

Application procedure: Your application must be submitted electronically by clicking 'Apply now' below. The application must include the following documents in PDF format:

1. Motivated letter of application (max. one page)

2. CV incl. education, experience, language skills and other skills relevant for the position

3. Certified copy of original Master of Science diploma and transcript of records in the original language, including an authorized English translation if issued in other language than English or Danish. If not completed, a certified/signed copy of a recent transcript of records or a written statement from the institution or supervisor is accepted. As a prerequisite for a PhD fellowship employment, your master's degree must be equivalent to a Danish master's degree. We encourage you to read more in the assessment database: https://ufm.dk/en/education/recognition-and-transparency/find-assessments/assessment-database. Please note that we might ask you to obtain an assessment of your education performed by the Ministry of Higher Education and Science

4. Publication list (if possible)

Application deadline: April 5, 23.59pm CET

The further process: After the expiry of the deadline for applications, the authorized recruitment manager selects applicants for assessment on the advice of the hiring committee. All applicants are then immediately notified whether their application has been passed for assessment by an unbiased assessor.

The assessor makes a non-prioritized assessment of the academic qualifications and experience with respect to the above-mentioned area of research, techniques, skills and other requirements listed in the advertisement.

Once the assessment work has been completed each applicant has the opportunity to comment on the part of the assessment that relates to the applicant him/herself.

You find information about the recruitment process at: https://employment.ku.dk/faculty/recruitment-process/

The applicants will be assessed according to the Ministerial Order no. 242 of 13 March 2012 on the Appointment of Academic Staff at Universities.

Interviews are expected to be held in Week 21.

The University of Copenhagen wish to reflect the diversity of society and encourage all qualified candidates to apply regardless of personal background.