Up to 11 PhD positions are open at BCAM - Basque Centre for Applied Mathematics in Bilbao (Basque Country, Spain) on a wide range of topics under the Severo Ochoa program http://www.bcamath.org/predoctoral2022/ <http://www.bcamath.org/predoctoral2022/>. Positions will be awarded through a selection process.

I’d be happy to support candidates motivated to work on multidisciplinary science at the edge of fields like complex systems, artificial life, statistical physics, machine learning or computational neuroscience. In particular, my research strives to understand theoretical principles of organisms' perception and behavior in adapting to the environment and extend this knowledge to design intelligent agents. I am interested in mathematical models at the interface of statistical physics and machine learning to understand adaptive self-organization in neural and living systems, combining tools from information theory, nonequilibrium thermodynamics, enactive cognitive science and complex adaptive systems theory [1,2,3]. Other possible research topics include areas like Integrated Information theory [4] and Bayesian approaches to cognition [5].

DETAILS:

• 4-year-long contracts

• Call deadline: Jan 26th, 2023 at 14:00h CET

• Recruitment date: Sept 2023 – Sept 2024.

• Funding per fellow: 18,450–22,730€ gross annual salary + doctoral tuition fees + 6,860€ to fund mobility costs

• Applicants should have a MSc or be in the process of obtaining it.


Feel free to send any informal questions regarding these positions.


References

[1] Aguilera, M, Moosavi, SA & Shimazaki H (2021).A unifying framework for mean-field theories of asymmetric kinetic Ising systems <https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-20890-5>. Nature Communications12:1197.

[2] Aguilera, M & Bedia, MG (2018).Adaptation to criticality through organizational invariance in embodied agents <https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-25925-4>. Scientific Reportsvolume 8, Article number: 7723 (2018).

[3] Aguilera, M., Igarashi, M., & Shimazaki, H. (2022). Nonequilibrium thermodynamics of the asymmetric Sherrington-Kirkpatrick model <https://arxiv.org/abs/2205.09886>. arXiv preprint arXiv:2205.09886.

[4] Aguilera, M & Di Paolo, EA (2019).Integrated information in the thermodynamic limit <https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neunet.2019.03.001>. Neural Networks, Volume 114, pp 136-146.

[5] Aguilera, M, Millidge, B, Tschantz, A & Buckley, CL (2022).How particular is the physics of the free energy principle? <https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-20890-5>. Physics of Life Reviews40:24-50.

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Miguel Aguilera | Ikerbasque Research Fellow | Basque Center for Applied Mathematics |https://maguilera.net