The Department of Human Studies of the University of L’Aquila (Italy) is opening a three-year junior faculty position as “Ricercatore di tipo A” (RTD-A – Assistant Professor) in Logic and Philosophy of Science, connected to a research project whose title is “Philosophy and Robots: Ethical and Epistemological Issues” (in Italian: “Filosofia degli automi: prospettive etiche ed epistemologiche”).  It is not a tenure-track position.

The following is a brief English synthesis of the description of the sought-after profile, concerning both the expected teaching duties and the research activities:

“The  research fellow should teach some modules in Logic and Philosophy fo Science, in the context of both undergraduate and graduate programmes. The modules will be taught both at the Department of Human Studies and at the Department of Information Science. The teaching duties will also include seminars and integrative activities. The teaching duties will concern in particular topics broadly connected with the ethical and epistemological issues concerning autonomous systems, automatic guided vehicles, and data-mining technologies. The teaching duty will consist of a total of 350 hours/year, including 60 hours of lectures.

The research activities, under the supervision of professor Simone Gozzano  (website: https://scienzeumane.univaq.it/index.php?id=gozzano; email: simone.gozzano@univaq.it ) will be in collaboration with professor Paola Inverardi ( http://informatica.univaq.it/teachers/paola-inverardi/ ) and will be focused on the ethics and epistemology of artificial intelligence. From automatic guided vehicles to data-mining algorithms and military applications, artifical intelligence is increasingly in connection with our life. The systems at play are sometimes thought to make choices, to act on the basis of these choices, and to be even responsible for these actions. These systems are also expected to be trusted by human agents. These issues raise multifarious philosophical issues.

The research fellow is expected to contribute to deepen the understanding of the behaviour of autonomous systems; to contribute to elaborate ethically explicit guildelines and algortihmic procedures, which are also expected to be understandable for users; to investigate the concept of trust, that is entrenched with these topics.”

The research fellow is also expected to spend at least 6 months in collaboration with RadioLabs (Consorzio Università Industria – Laboratori di Radiocomunicazioni), a no-profit organization devoted to applied research, innovation, knowledge transfer, and ICT.

At least part of the teaching load and the academic life will be in Italian and for this reason a basic knowledge of Italian is desirable.

Scientific supervisor: professor Simone Gozzano (website: https://scienzeumane.univaq.it/index.php?id=gozzano; email: simone.gozzano@univaq.it )

The official call for applications and the details on how to apply can be found (unfortunately only in Italian) is available at the following link:

https://www.univaq.it/include/utilities/blob.php?table=concorso_doc&id=232&item=bando

At the following link you can find some basic information in English about the job selection:

https://www.univaq.it/en/section.php?id=1532&lang_s=en (university website, look for Researchers –> 11/C2 Logic and Philosophy of Science)

For any further information about the job selection, please contact the scientific supervisor (see email address above).