PhD position: Explainability, Responsibility, and Clinical Judgment in Medical AI
As part of the Research Training Group KEMAI – Knowledge Infusion and Extraction for Explainable Medical AI, funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG), a PhD position in the field of digital ethics is available from January 2027 onward. The project is situated at the intersection of philosophy, computer science, and medicine and investigates the role of explainable AI (XAI) in clinical decision-making contexts.
The PhD project will be jointly supervised by Prof. Dr. Rebekka Hufendiek and Dr. Hauke Behrendt.
The KEMAI team aims to combine the benefits of knowledge-based and learning-based systems in order not only to achieve state-of-the-art accuracy in medical diagnosis, but also to communicate predictions to physicians in an interpretable and clinically meaningful way, while taking ethical implications within medical decision-making processes into account.
KEMAI’s central goal is to provide interdisciplinary doctoral training in explainable medical AI for researchers from computer science, medicine, and philosophy. The RTG offers a structured doctoral program that creates an environment in which early-career researchers can conduct high-level interdisciplinary research in the field of medical AI.
We invite highly motivated candidates with a strong interest in research and a desire to contribute to an interdisciplinary academic environment to apply. The position is funded for 3+1 years and comes with a 65% TV-L E13 salary.
The deadline for applications is the 30th of June 2026
For further information, please visit the RTG website:
https://kemai.uni-ulm.de/
Information on the application process can be found here:
https://kemai.uni-ulm.de/application/phd-application/
In addition to the requested documents, please attach a writing sample (e.g., a chapter from your MA-thesis or a draft paper)
