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Saarland University is a campus university with an international reputation for research excellence, particularly in computer science and in the life sciences and nanosciences. The university is also distinguished by its close ties to France and its strong European focus. Around 17,000 students, studying over one hundred different academic disciplines, are currently enrolled at Saarland University. Saarland University is officially recognized as one of Germany’s family-friendly higher-education institutions and with a combined workforce of more than 4000 it is oneof the largest employers in the region.

The Department of Computer Science at Saarland University is inviting applications for one PhD position commencing at the earliest possible date.

Academic research assistant (m/f/x)

Reference number W2866, salary in accordance with the German TV-L salary scale1, pay grade: E13, for the duration of 4 years, employment: 100 % of standard working time.

Workplace/Department:

The Chair of Computer Science and Computational Linguistics invites excellent students holding master’s degree for one PhD student position in the field of natural language processing.You will join Prof. Vera Demberg’s lab which cover the highly interdisciplinary and fast-paced fields ofpsycholinguistics and computational linguistics.

The PhD position is a part of the Konrad Zuse School of Excellence in Learning and Intelligent Systems (ELIZA) and will be located in Saarbrücken.

ELIZA is a graduate school in Artificial Intelligence funded by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD).Research and academic training within ELIZA focus on four key areas: (1) the foundations of Machine Learning (ML)— including ML-driven fields such as Computer Vision, Natural Language Processing (NLP), or Robot Learning —, (2)machine learning systems, (3) applications in autonomous systems, and (4) transdisciplinary applications of ML in other scientific domains, ranging from the life sciences to physics.

Saarland University is one of the leading centres for computational linguistics and computer science in Europe and offers a dynamic and stimulating research environment. It is famous for its interdisciplinary research in language,translation, computation and cognition. The group is affiliated with both the Department of Computer Science and with the Department of Language Science and Technology.

The Department of Language Science and Technology organizes about 100 research staff in ten research groups in the fields of computational linguistics,psycholinguistics, speech processing, and corpus linguistics.1 TV-L = collective agreement on remuneration of public sector employees in the German Länder. Both departments are part of the Saarland Informatics Campus, which brings together 800 researchers and 2000 students from 81 countries. We collaborate closely with the university's Department of Computer Science, the Max Planck Institute for Informatics, the Max Planck Institute for Software Systems, and the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI).Our researchers and students come from all over the world, and our primary working language is English.

The focus of the project:

The proposed PhD project should relate to one of the following research topics:

• computational models of pragmatics and/or theory of mind, with a focus on inferring the intent of the conversational partner during interaction- experimental studies and computational models on how individual differences in human cognition affect humanlanguage processing.

Job requirements and responsibilities:

 The position is intended to begin at the earliest possible date (start-date is negotiable in both directions, i.e.,

earlier start as soon as August 2026 or a later start are possible).

 Prior experience of research activities in natural language processing, machine learning methods.

 Prior experience in authoring scientific papers at a top venue is a plus.

 Strong grades from a top degree program in a relevant field.

 The research will be conducted in English and a successful applicant must have excellent spoken and written proficiency in English.

 Strong motivation for scientific research.

 Strong interest in the research topics studied by the group.

 Interest in bridging scientific fields, specifically psycholinguistics / cognitive science and computational linguistics.

 Please also see the ELIZA PhD Program Requirements and Arrangements for ELIZA-funded PhD students here:

https://eliza.school/opportunities/eliza-phd-program-fully-funded-positions/

Your academic qualifications:

 Completed university studies in : A master's degree in computational linguistics, computer science or a related discipline.

The successful candidate will also be expected to:

 Contribute to activities of the research group in the areas of research, teaching and mentoring

 Applicants are requested to submit their application, including a cover letter that specifies why you would like towork on this topic and what qualifies you for it, an academic CV, a list of academic publications, your MSc thesis(or a current draft), copies of academic degree certificates and names of two potential references. Please also include a 2-page research proposal in your application which outlines your research idea and how you would approach it.

What we can offer you:

 A flexible work schedule allowing you to balance work and family

 A broad range of further education and professional development programmes

 An occupational health management model with numerous attractive options, such as our university sports

programme

 30 vacation days per year; in addition, we honor the German public holidays

 Supplementary pension scheme (RZVK)

 Discounted tickets on local public transport services (‘Jobticket‘ of the SaarVV)

 Job bike leasing (JobRad)

We look forward to receiving your meaningful online application. Please quote reference number W2866 when applying. Applications must be received by no later than 18. June 2026 and should be sent via email to Prof. Vera

Demberg at: applications-vd@lst.uni-saarland.de

Prof. Dr. Vera Demberg

Saarland University

Chair of Computer Science and Computational Linguistics

Campus C7.2, room 3.02

66123 Saarbrücken

If you have any questions, please contact us for assistance. Your contact: Prof. Vera Demberg (vera@coli.unisaarland.de).