Overview
The Natural Language Processing Section at the Department of Computer Science invites highly-motivated applicants for a Ph.D Fellow in Natural Language Processing. The start date is expected to be 1 September 2026 or as soon as possible thereafter.
Project Description
The overall goal of the project is to advance the theory and application of language models that can process any written language by rendering text as images. This visual representation of text allows a model to learn cross-lingually based on the visual similarities between written languages. The project includes creating and implementing tokenization-free multilingual language models, collecting and curating visually diverse language data, and training both small-scale and large-scale language models. In particular, the selected Ph.D Fellow will be expected to focus on the development of hybrid models that can jointly process tokenizer-based and tokenizer-free representations.
The position is funded by a Carlsberg Foundation Semper Ardens: Accelerate Grant held by the principal investigator, Desmond Elliott. The project team includes the principal investigator, and three Ph.D Fellows, as well as external collaborators.
Our Research
The Natural Language Processing Section provides a strong, international, and diverse environment for research within core as well as emerging topics in natural language processing, natural language understanding, computational linguistics and multimodal language processing. It is housed within the main Science Campus, which is located in central Copenhagen. Further information on the Department is available at https://di.ku.dk/english/.
Principal supervisor is Associate Professor Desmond Elliott, Department of Computer Science, 
, Direct phone: +45 93 50 91 75.
The PhD programme
Qualifications needed for the regular programme
To be eligible for the regular PhD programme, you must have completed a degree programme, equivalent to a Danish master’s degree (180 ECTS/3 FTE BSc + 120 ECTS/2 FTE MSc) related to the subject area of the project. For information of eligibility of completed programmes, see General assessments for specific countries and Assessment database.
Terms of employment in the regular programme
Employment as PhD fellow is full time and for maximum 3 years.
Employment is conditional upon your successful enrolment as a PhD student at the PhD School at the Faculty of SCIENCE, University of Copenhagen. This requires submission and acceptance of an application for the specific project formulated by the applicant.
The terms of employment and salary are in accordance with the agreement between the Ministry of Finance and The Danish Confederation of Professional Associations on Academics in the State (AC). The position is covered by the Protocol on Job Structure.
Responsibilities and tasks in the PhD programme
Carry through an independent research project under supervision
Complete PhD courses corresponding to approx. 30 ECTS / ½ FTE
Participate in active research environments, including a stay at another research institution, preferably abroad
Teaching and knowledge dissemination activities
Write scientific papers aimed at high-impact journals
Write and defend a PhD thesis on the basis of your project
Company:
University of Copenhagen
Qualifications:
We are looking for the following qualifications:
Professional qualifications relevant to the PhD project
Relevant publications
Relevant work experience
Other relevant professional activities
Curious mind-set with a strong interest in language and machine learning
Good language skills
Educational level:
Master Degree
About University of Copenhagen
The University of Copenhagen is an educational institution that promotes knowledge through research and advanced educational opportunities.
