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PhD & Postdoc Positions in Trustworthy AI and Alignment (m/f/d) - CRISTAL Lab

St. Ingbert, Germany

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The research group of Dr. Cristina Gârbacea is actively recruiting fully funded PhD Students, Postdoctoral Researchers, and Interns (BSc/MSc/PhD) to join CRISTAL Lab at the CISPA! Her research focus includes:

  • LLM Alignment: Developing principled, scalable methods ensuring foundation models align with human intent and diverse preferences.
  • AI Safety & Robustness: Building verifiable alignment mechanisms, safety guarantees, and defenses against failures and adversarial exploits.
  • Agentic AI & Continual Learning: Investigating autonomous reasoning systems capable of long-horizon planning and tool use without safety drift.
  • Benchmarking & Evaluation: Creating contamination-resilient environments to accurately measure evolving capabilities and real-world alignment.

"CRISTAL lab's mission is to develop cutting-edge AI systems that can communicate effectively, reason reliably, operate safely in complex environments, and make transparent and trustworthy decisions. We are focused on pushing the boundaries of AI alignment, reasoning, safety evaluation, and interpretability."

CRISTAL Lab
CISPA Helmholtz Center for Information Security

If you wish to be part of CRISTAL Lab's next breakthrough, please follow the application guidelines carefully and submit all the required documents in our application form.

Note: Intern positions are available and can be applied to here.

What We Offer:

  • Competitive full time-gross base salary for E13 according to the scale of the TVöD (German Federal Employment Agreement) 
  • Comprehensive benefits package that includes health insurance coverage, 30 days of paid vacation and a robust pension scheme.
  • Possibilities for personal and professional growth, encompassing language classes, research support, as well as extracurricular and social activities
  • Our onboarding team will provide you with all the necessary support for a seamless and successful start to your journey with us
  • We maintain a trustworthy, inclusive, and safe space and are looking for curious and creative new colleagues willing to learn & grow in an enjoyable and friendly team atmosphere.

What We Expect:

PhD

  • You hold a master's degree in computer science, data science and AI or a related field.
  • Curiosity, critical thinking, technical background (projects, coursework, or early research), and growth trajectory.

PostDoc

  • You hold a  PHD in a related field.
  • You have scientific independence, leadership potential, and alignment with the lab’s core vision.
  • You have a strong publication track record in relevant venues (e.g., NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR, ACL, EMNLP, COLM).

Detailed requirements can be found on CRISTAL lab website.

Working at CISPA:

  • We promote a flat hierarchy that encourages working together as a cohesive team and contributing one’s perspectives and ideas.
  • We offer an excellent research environment with close individual supervision, worldwide collaborations, and with significant funding for travel and equipment.
  • Excellent English, but no German? CISPA is an international research institute. Knowing German is really not necessary, although daily life is a bit smoother if you speak a few words and if you want to learn German, we offer free courses.
  • Our locations is in St. Ingbert, in the Saarland region with international flair (e.g., an International School and distinguished cuisine influenced by the proximity to the French border). Saarland is also known for its green spaces, parks and proximity to nature, providing opportunities for relaxation and outdoor activities.

About the Faculty:

Cristina Gârbacea is Tenure-Track Faculty and Chief Scientist at the CISPA Helmholtz Center for Information Security, where she leads the CRISTAL Lab (Communication, Reasoning, Intelligence & Safety for Trustworthy ALignment). Her research centers on machine learning and trustworthy AI, focusing on foundation model alignment, agentic reasoning, personalized preference modeling, and safety evaluation. 


Prior to joining CISPA, she was a Postdoctoral Scholar at the University of Chicago Data Science Institute. She completed her PhD in Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Michigan and holds an MSc in Artificial Intelligence (cum laude) from the University of Amsterdam. Additionally, she has completed research scientist internships at Google DeepMind and Microsoft Research.


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