Motivation: Safety is the up-most important concern in autonomous driving. Existing perception algorithms focuses on semantics of the environment, e.g., identifying the existence and location of a pedestrian. However, prediction the intention of the pedestrians is less exploited, e.g., whether the pedestrian is going to cross the road, or change the route; whether the pedestrian notices coming traffic and intended to give way.

Objectives: This project aims to develop a systematically solution for prediction pedestrians’ intention in typical driving scenes. More specifically, we take the perspective of an autonomous driving car and intent to predict the intention of the pedestrians in the scene. Especially, we focus on those intentions which are essential for the safety.

Approach: You will be joining the Computer Vision Research Group (CVRG) of University of Amsterdam (UvA) https://ivi.fnwi.uva.nl/cv/, and collaborate with the research and development team of autonomous driving company Zongmu. www.zongmutech.com/en/. The project aims to develop the new state-of-the-art on this topic over the three years and aim to publish three or papers in topic-tier conferences and journals.

First priorities, you will be required to deliver cutting edge research and products in this topic:

• You will be joining the Computer Vision (CV) research group of University of Amsterdam (UvA), and collaborate with the research and development team of autonomous driving company Zongmu;
• The project will aim to develop reasonable solutions so that the company can implement it in real autonomous driving products;
• The project aims to develop the new state-of-the-art on this topic over the three years and aims to publish three or papers in topic-tier conferences and journals;
• You will be supervised by project’s PI dr. Shaodi You and the group leader prof. dr. Theo Gevers.

Career development, through this position, you will have opportunities to develop your academic career through opportunities including but not limited to:

• You will be encouraged to actively pursuing external funding for research, notably funding from research councils, national as well as European;
• Co-supervising PhD and master students if possible;
• Actively contributing to and developing national and international research networks and other forms of cooperation;
• Developing and teaching courses in the bachelor and master programmes;
• Actively contributing to the development and improvement of the broader teaching programmes in the department;
• Actively contributing to the research activities of Institute of Informatics.

Your experience and profile:

• A PhD degree in computer vision, machine learning or related area;
• A good research track record that is demonstrated by peer reviewed publications;
• Good communicate skill and good teamwork;
• Professional command of English;
• Experience in research & development is a plus;
• Experience in vision and learning for autonomous driving is a plus.

We offer a temporary employment contract for 38 hours per week for a period of 12 months. The preferred starting date is June 2023 or earlier. If we assess your performance positive, your contract will be extended with 24 months.

The gross monthly salary, based on 38 hours per week and dependent on relevant experience, ranges between € 2,960 to € 4,670 (scale 10). This does not include the 8% holiday allowance and the 8,3% year-end allowance the UvA offers. The UFO profile Researcher 4 is applicable. A favourable tax agreement, the ‘30% ruling’, may apply to non-Dutch applicants. The Collective Labour Agreement of Universities of the Netherlands is applicable.

Besides the salary and a vibrant and challenging environment at Science Park we offer you multiple fringe benefits:

• 232 holiday hours per year (based on fulltime) and extra holidays between Christmas and 1 January;
• Multiple courses to follow from our Teaching and Learning Centre;
• Multiple courses on topics such as leadership for academic staff;
• Multiple courses on topics such as time management, handling stress and an online learning platform with 100+ different courses;
• 7 weeks birth leave (partner leave) with 100% salary;
• Partly paid parental leave;
• The possibility to set up a workplace at home;
• A pension at ABP for which UvA pays two third part of the contribution;
• The possibility to follow courses to learn Dutch;
• Help with housing for a studio or small apartment when you’re moving from abroad.

Are you curious to read more about our extensive package of secondary employment benefits, take a look here.

Faculty of Science

The University of Amsterdam (UvA) is the Netherlands' largest university, offering the widest range of academic programmes. At the UvA, 42,000 students, 6,000 staff members and 3,000 PhD candidates study and work in a diverse range of fields, connected by a culture of curiosity.

The Faculty of Science has a student body of around 8,000, as well as 1,800 members of staff working in education, research or support services. Researchers and students at the Faculty of Science are fascinated by every aspect of how the world works, be it elementary particles, the birth of the universe or the functioning of the brain.

The mission of the Informatics Institute (IvI) is to perform curiosity-driven and use-inspired fundamental research in Computer Science. The main research themes are Artificial Intelligence, Computational Science and Systems and Network Engineering. Our research involves complex information systems at large, with a focus on collaborative, data driven, computational and intelligent systems, all with a strong interactive component.

You will be working within the Computer Vision (CV) research group which focuses on studying core computer vision technologies and in particular colour processing, 3D reconstruction, object recognition, and human-behaviour analysis. The aim is to provide theories, representation models and computational methods which are essential for image and video understanding. Research ranges from image processing (filtering, feature extraction, reflection modeling, and photometry), invariants (color, descriptors, scene), image understanding (physics‐based, probabilistic), object recognition (classification and detection) to activity recognition with a focus on human‐behavior (eye tracking, facial expression, head pose, age and gender).

Want to know more about our organisation? Read more about working at the University of Amsterdam.