MSCA-PF: Joint application at the University of Granada. Department of Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence.

Professor Juan Manuel Fernández Luna, from the Department of Science and Artificial Intelligence at the University of Granada, welcomes postdoctoral candidates interested in applying for a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellowship (MSCA-PF) in 2024 at this University. Please note that applicants must comply with the Mobility Rule (for more information about the 2024 call, please consult this link.

Brief description of the institution:

The University of Granada (UGR), founded in 1531, is one of the largest and most important universities in Spain. With over 56,000 undergraduate and postgraduate students and more than 6,000 members of staff, the UGR offers over 90 undergraduate degrees, 164 master’s degrees (8 of which are international double degrees) and 28 doctoral programmes via its 124 departments and nearly 50 centers. Accordingly, the UGR offers one of the most extensive and diverse ranges of higher education programmes in Spain.

The UGR has been awarded with the "Human Resources Excellence in Research (HRS4R)", which reflects the the institution’s commitment to continuously improve its human resource policies in line with the European Charter for Researchers and the Code of Conduct for the Recruitment of Researchers. The UGR is also internationally renowned for its excellence in diverse research fields and ranked among the top Spanish universities in a variety of ranking criteria, such as national R&D projects, fellowships awarded, publications, and international funding.

The UGR is one of the few Spanish Universities listed in the Shanghai Top 500 ranking - Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU). The 2023 edition of the ARWU places the UGR in 201-300th position in the world and as the 1-2 highest ranked University in Spain (http://sl.ugr.es/0dwJ), reaffirming its position as an institution at the forefront of national and international research. From the perspective of specialist areas in the ARWU rankings (http://sl.ugr.es/0bSp), the UGR is outstanding in Food Science & Technology (ranked in the 48th position in the world), Hospitality & Tourism Management (ranked between 51th-75th position), and in the areas of Mathematics and Library & Information Science, both of them ranked between 76th-100th position. A little lower in the ranking, the UGR also stands out in the areas of Biomedical Engineering, Computer Science & Engineering and Nursing, in which the UGR is positioned at the rank in the 101-150th position. Finally, Dentistry & Oral Sciences is positioned between 151-200th position.

Additionally, the UGR counts with 9 researchers at the top of the Highly Cited Researchers (HCR) list, most of them related to the Computer Science scientific area. It is also well recognised for its web presence (http://sl.ugr.es/0a6i), being positioned at 76th place in the top 200 Universities in Europe.

Internationally, the University of Granada is firmly committed to its participation in the calls of the Framework Programme of the European Union. For the duration of the last Framework Programme, Horizon 2020, the UGR obtained a total of 121 projects with a total funding of around €29,4 million. For the current Framework Programme, Horizon Europe, the UGR has obtained 74 projects, so far, with a total funding of almost €20 million.

Brief description of the Centre/Research Group:

The candidate would be host at the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Department at the University of Granada, although she/he will work very closely with members of the Department of Preventive Medicine and Public Health from this university. More specifically, in the context of the AIRES initiative, the postdoc researcher will work in a wider and multidisciplinary environment, where the members present experience of joint working in multicenter projects. Members have an individually and collectively distinctive track record(s) in computer sciences, systematic review, study quality assessment, meta-analysis, evidence grading, public health, cardiometabolic research, and various forms of evidence synthesis including both randomized and real-world data.

More specifically, the research group from the Professor Fernández Luna is basically focused on the intelligent access field, more specifically in the areas of Information Retrieval and Recommender Systems, where they have been working for more than 20 years and published a wide range of papers in the main international journals and conferences. Machine Learning and Text Mining have been the main tools used to solve the problems faced in these areas. 

Project description:

 Published biomedical research needs to be synthesised for health practitioners. This currently takes too long to contemporaneously enhance health care quality because the methods of evidence synthesis that bring together published studies to underpin guidance for practice have well recognised, serious delays taking on average 5 staff members over 12 months to complete a review. We postulate that artificial intelligence (AI) can assist in evidence synthesis, improving the timeliness of guidelines. The objective of this project is, using beyond state-of-the-art methodology, develop an integrated system using modern AI technologies to support the complete process of systematic reviews. We will validate the performance the AI-based system quantifying its accuracy, precision, heterogeneity, bias and generalizability compared to a standard meta-analysis. We wish to form an international consortium of well-established researchers with individually distinctive track records in computer science, systematic review, study quality assessment, meta-analysis, evidence grading, public health, cardiometabolic research, and various forms of evidence synthesis including both randomized and real-world data. We will collaborate as a multidisciplinary team involving relevant stakeholders. This will allow the delivery of a much-needed, exciting, groundbreaking, high-quality and impactful project. Our output will help accelerate the process of meta-analyses, evidence synthesis and transfer of research into guidelines for improving the quality of health care.

The postdoc researcher should be an expert in AI techniques, specifically in information retrieval, text mining and deep learning. She/he will be in charge of proposing solutions and evaluating them for the automation of systematic reviews.

Research Area:

☒ Information Science and Engineering (ENG)

☒ Life Sciences (LIFE)

For a correct evaluation of your candidature, please send the documents below to Professor Juan Manuel Fernández Luna (jmfluna@ugr.es): 

• CV
• Letter of recommendation (optional)