This opportunity invites applications from outstanding domestic and international candidates who are interested in undertaking a PhD focused on bias propagation in agentic and generative AI-driven decision systems and its implications for trust, governance, and regulatory compliance. The project is part of an interdisciplinary research team led by experts from the Opportunity Tech Lab within the Monash Business School and the Faculty of IT at Monash University.
The PhD candidate will be working with a team of distinguished researchers:
This project addresses a pressing public policy and social issue: the propagation of bias in agentic and generative AI systems and its impact on human decision-making, trust, and regulatory design. The rapid evolution of AI, from generative models that produce text and recommendations to agentic AI systems that autonomously plan, act, and make decisions with limited human oversight, has transformed how critical choices are made across high-stakes domains including financial markets, healthcare, and legal practice. These systems' capacity to produce biased, yet seemingly neutral, outputs poses a significant and growing risk to fairness, accountability, and public trust.
A core focus of the project is understanding how AI-generated explanations and autonomous AI actions influence trust formation, cognitive effort, and user behaviour, including the risk of over-reliance (automation bias) or inappropriate scepticism when AI outputs are misleading, hallucinated, or generated through opaque multi-step reasoning. As agentic AI systems increasingly operate across organisational processes with minimal human intervention, understanding how bias propagates through chains of autonomous decisions becomes essential.
The candidate will contribute to the development of empirically validated methods for identifying, measuring, and mitigating bias propagation effects. The research will involve experimental studies utilising the advanced neurophysiological infrastructure of the Monash Business Behavioural Laboratory (MBBL) – including EEG, eye-tracking, pupillometry, fNIRS, and psychophysiological assessment – alongside cognitive modelling and regulatory analysis. This combination of cutting-edge neuroscience methods with legal and governance scholarship is a distinctive feature of the project.
This doctoral project will conduct experimental research on generative and agentic AI systems, with a focus on the experiences and risks faced by vulnerable populations. The research program is designed to produce empirically grounded insights that inform harm mitigation strategies, transparency mechanisms, and responsible deployment protocols relevant to both policymakers and organisational decision-makers. Rather than pursuing broad ethical theorising, the project emphasises causal evidence on how AI design and deployment choices shape downstream social and economic outcomes for populations with asymmetric power, information, or risk exposure. We are looking for a researcher who wants to produce empirical evidence that informs real policy and organisational decisions, rather than work that is mainly philosophical or purely technical.
Essential Skills and Experience:
Desirable skills:
To Apply:
This position has a two-stage selection process.
Stage 1: Expression of Interest. To apply, please submit an Expression of Interest (EOI) via email to Professor Kristian Rotaru (kristian.rotaru@monash.edu). Please use the following subject line: EOI – PhD Scholarship – AI Bias – [Your Full Name].
Your EOI must include the following:
Incomplete applications (e.g., EOIs submitted without a CV or academic transcripts) will not be considered.
Stage 2: Interview and Formal Application. Candidates shortlisted from the EOI stage will be invited to discuss their ideas via Zoom prior to submitting a formal PhD application to the Faculty of Business and Economics. The successful candidate will enrol in an interdisciplinary cross-faculty project, with the PhD degree to be awarded by the Faculty of Business and Economics upon completion of the project and the Monash doctoral requirements.
Enquiries: Professor Kristian Rotaru, kristian.rotaru@monash.edu, +61 3 9903 4567
Applications Close: Friday 17 April 2026, 11:55pm AEST
Monash University recognises that its Australian campuses are located on the unceded lands of the people of the Kulin nations, and pays its respects to their elders, past and present.
Tagged as: Life Sciences
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