Leading artificial intelligence research lab Google DeepMind is supporting Oxford in its efforts to advance research and drive greater diversity within the fields of AI and machine learning (ML).
A gift from Google DeepMind will enable the Department of Statistics to recruit a new senior postdoctoral research associate working in either AI or ML. The research associate will be based within the Oxford Computational Statistics and Machine Learning group, which operates at the cutting-edge of statistical machine learning.
As well as investigating how AI and ML can be used to aid societal and scientific development, the post holder will support the ongoing efforts of the department to diversify the AI and ML research community. Their role will involve designing and delivering outreach activities aimed at encouraging under-represented students to take up undergraduate and postgraduate study in AI-related fields. They will also serve as a role model, ambassador and point of contact for emerging talent.
Professor of Statistical Machine Learning Yee-Whye Teh will provide academic mentorship and guidance to the post holder. He said: ‘AI is impacting all areas of society and this postdoctoral fellowship is a great opportunity to ensure that a diverse set of voices and perspectives are represented in the community developing these technologies.’
Recruitment is currently underway for the new three-year post, with the appointed candidate expected to begin at Oxford at the start of the 2024/25 academic year. As part of its commitment to advancing racial and gender equality, the department is particularly welcoming applications from women and Black and minority ethnic candidates, who are currently under-represented in positions of this type at Oxford.
Professor Christl Donnelly, Head of the Department of Statistics, said: ‘Developments in AI and machine learning are going ahead at full speed. We need to be able to draw on all available talent to meet today’s challenges, otherwise everyone misses out.’
Obum Ekeke OBE, Head of Education Partnerships at Google DeepMind, said: ‘By supporting top universities through our Academic Fellowships funding stream, we hope to help these institutions to create opportunities for early career AI researchers – so they can thrive in their careers and become the leaders of tomorrow.’
Google DeepMind is a world-leading AI research lab with British heritage and an international team committed to building AI responsibly, delivering scientific breakthroughs and creating products that improve lives. The unit’s successes over the last decade include AlphaGo, the first computer programme to defeat a Go world champion; Transformers, the design architecture that underpins all modern language models; AlphaFold, an AI system that predicts 3D models of protein structures enabling further scientific advancement; and Gemini, a family of versatile AI models built from the ground up for multimodality, seamlessly combining and understanding text, code, images, audio and video.
This donation is part of Google DeepMind’s wider goal to broaden participation in science – including at Oxford, where it has supported the provision of scholarships for graduate students and the creation of undergraduate research internships in AI and ML.