Postdoc Position in Personalized Visual Analytics: Human Preference Elicitation for Ranking-based Multi-criteria Decision Support

**Department of Informatics**
**PostDoc Position in Personalized Visual Analytics: Human Preference Elicitation for Ranking-Based Multi-Criteria Decision Support 100 %**: Start of employment 15.01.2025, temporary

**Your responsibilities**:

- Multi-criteria decision support through item ranking is an understudied research direction. Current solutions exhibit considerable limitations, primarily due to their inability to meet the multi-faceted nature of human decision-making. Choosing between thousands of relevant items is a common task, where people are left alone with the need to express and balance multiple desirable preferences at once. Item rankings are a popular and universal approach to structuring unorganized item collections by multiple criteria at the same time. In interactive solutions, people can express multiple preferences, used by algorithms to compute human-centered and personal rankings. Visual Analytics (VA) is a field of research that supports complex human decision-making tasks by bringing together human intellectuality with the computational power of algorithms in effective human-in-the-loop approaches.
In this project, we will demonstrate how cutting-edge VA principles can be transferred to item ranking, to overcome remaining challenges, demonstrate effective and efficient interactive ranking creation solutions, and empower broad audiences. Limitations of ranking systems mainly include their incompatibility for the elicitation of item
- and attribute-based preferences, insufficient handling of user-introduced uncertainty, inadequate guidance for engaging with large item sets, lacking interaction histories, inefficient human-centric feedback loops, or a lack of explanations and transparency of ranking algorithms, thus creating a disconnect between the technology and nuanced user needs. Finally, interactive ranking creation does not yet make use of interfaces for eliciting implicit user preferences, e.g., in textual form using large language models.
We offer:

- Hands-on supervision/mentorship for further career development
- Support in conducting excellent research and in publishing results in top international journals and conferences
- Creative working atmosphere in a motivated, cooperative, and technically very well-equipped environment
- Possibility to work with several Ph.D. students in the lab in topics around IVDA, particularly on personalized VA for item ranking
- Excellent professional and personal development possibilities and hence, excellent basis for a future career in interactive visual data analysis in an industrial context
- Specific benefits like flexible working hours, young scientist promotion opportunities, parental leave benefits, nursery services, and care for dependents and much more
- Very good salary, according to local university regulations and standards in Switzerland

**Your profile**:

- Ph.D. degree, e.g., in Informatics, ML/AI, Data Science, or HCI.
- Strong publication record and ability to conduct scientific work and dissemination activities in the realm of visual analytics.
- Excellent communication and collaboration skills, and ability to work in interdisciplinary teams.
- Ability to independently teach university-level courses and supervise students.
- Extensive expertise in some of these areas: visual analytics, data science, information retrieval, data mining, machine/deep learning, AI, natural language processing, explainable AI, human-centered AI, responsible AI, algorithmic fairness, biases, transparency, HCI, applied research methods, or types of empirical research.
- Profound skills in programming in Python and supervise programming projects.
- Motivation letter
- Detailed CV
- Certificates of degrees and educational background
- Clear exposition of prior data visualization experience
- Copy of the Ph.D. Thesis

**What we offer**:
**Work-Life Balance**
- Flexible working models (such as part-time positions, mobile working, job-sharing)
- Childcare at the kihz foundation of UZH and ETH

**Learning and Development**
- Wide range of continuing education courses of UZH and the Canton of Zurich
- Language Center run jointly with ETH Zurich

**Food**
- Food and drinks at reduced prices in the UZH cafeterias
- Lunch-Check-card with UZH contribution

**Healthcare**
- Special conditions on the Academic Sports Association ASVZ
- Free seasonal flu vaccinations
- Rest and relaxation at the quiet room in the university tower

**Discounts**
- Private traffic: Carsharing, rent a vehicle, parking space
- Digitalization: Hardware, software, mobile phone subscriptions
- Special conditions on hotel reservations

**Conditions of Employment**
- Policies of the UZH
- Most UZH staff are employed according to public law

**International Services**
- Support for people from outside Switzerland

**Campuses**
- Campuses Zurich City, Zurich Irchel, Oerlikon and Schlieren
- Sites Zurich West, Old Botanical Garden, Botanical Garden and Lengg

**Location**:
**Department of I