Postdoctoral Researcher in Natural Language Processing

Itec is a research group at KU Leuven and imec, Flanders’ high-tech research and innovation hub for nanoelectronics and digital technologies. Located on the campus Kulak Kortrijk of KU Leuven, the group conducts interdisciplinary research on the design, development, and evaluation of personalized and adaptive digital solutions. Itec’s primary application domains include education, training, and health. You will be joining the language & technology team and the natural language processing research track. Since we are part of the Linguistics department, our goal is not only to engineer new solutions but also to ensure our work is linguistically relevant and grounded. Responsibilities As postdoctoral researcher, you will work on applied research projects that are industrially relevant and in collaboration with companies. These projects are situated in our primary application domains, namely education, training, and health. You will ensure that the research remains state-of-the-art in NLP, overseeing project execution to ensure that objectives are realized in a timely and high-quality manner. Furthermore, you will take on key project management responsibilities, including monitoring progress and facilitating collaboration among partners. Research
• Conduct literature reviews.
• Support data collection and analysis.
• Develop and evaluate NLP algorithms and models. Relevant NLP tasks include: ASR, (local) LLMs, open-domain and domain-specific language models, question answering, conversational agents, automated answer scoring, feedback generation.
• Participate in experimental evaluation of developed technologies.
• Identify potential issues, blocking factors, and proactively propose solutions.
• Write research and project documentation. Collaboration
• Collaborate with senior and junior researchers within the team.
• Coordinate work with other research and industrial partners within the projects.
• Align work and objectives between work packages within projects.
• Participate in project meetings and consortium activities. Dissemination
• Communicate and disseminate results in scientific conferences and publications.
• Work on developing proofs of concept (demos) for different project outcomes.
• Participate in scientific outreach (professionally oriented conferences).
• Support the organization of workshops, study days, networking events, etc. Management
• Monitor progress on project tasks, deadlines, milestones, and deliverables.
• Writing progress reports and other project documentation.
• Contribute to writing proposals for new research projects.
• Coordinate task execution between project partners to achieve the project objectives.
• Facilitate communication among project partners.
• Ensure effective collaboration between academic, industrial, and training stakeholders. Profile
• You hold a PhD degree in computer science or linguistics (or any related field), with a specialization in natural language processing and computational linguistics.
• You have a scientific background in the fields of Educational NLP and/or Industrial NLP or are willing to conduct research in these fields.
• Your technical expertise includes:
• Strong programming skills, particularly in Python. Proficiency in other languages is a plus.
• Strong knowledge of and experience in machine learning and deep learning techniques, and relevant libraries such as scikit-learn, PyTorch, transformers, LangChain, etc.
• Familiarity with version control (Git) and DevOps tools (Docker, Kubernetes, CI/CD pipelines).
• Familiarity with high-performance computing (GPU, CUDA, Slurm, etc.).
• Notions of full-stack software development or a willingness to develop these skills.
• You possess strong problem-solving and analytical abilities, with a research-oriented mindset. You can take initiative and excel both independently and as part of a team.
• Ideally, you already have expertise in the coordination and management of multi-partner research projects or are motivated to take on project management and coordination.
• Additionally, you have excellent communication skills, with fluency in English and preferably Dutch, both spoken and written. Offer
•

We offer
full-time employment for a Postdoctoral Researcher (salary scale 44 – postdoctoral assistant), ideally, you can start the position as soon as possible.
• The appointment will be for 1 year initially and can be extended after a positive evaluation, depending on available funding.
• The candidate will be working at KU Leuven Campus Kulak in Kortrijk.
• As Postdoctoral Researcher, you will have every opportunity to develop yourself further in your professional career, by studying literature, attending seminars and workshops, and interacting with leading researchers from multiple disciplines.
• The position offers flexibility and the opportunity to work in an enthusiastic team in a stimulating multicultural environment.
• In addition to a competitive salary, KU Leuven also offers several additional benefits, such as hospitalization insurance, eco-vouchers, reimbursement of commuting expenses by public transport, inexpensive meals, a KU Leuven bicycle, ... Interested? No applications via e-mail, please use the KU Leuven online application tool. Applications via e-mail will not be accepted. For more information please contact Mrs. Anaïs Tack, mail: anais.tack@kuleuven.be or Mrs. Ine Windey, mail: ine.windey@kuleuven.be. You can apply for this job no later than October 25, 2026 via the online application tool KU Leuven strives for an inclusive, respectful and socially safe environment. We embrace diversity among individuals and groups as an asset. Open dialogue and differences in perspective are essential for an ambitious research and educational environment. In our commitment to equal opportunity, we recognize the consequences of historical inequalities. We do not accept any form of discrimination based on, but not limited to, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, age, ethnic or national background, skin colour, religious and philosophical diversity, neurodivergence, employment disability, health, or socioeconomic status. For questions about accessibility or support offered, we are happy to assist you at this email address.
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