Internal Research Fellow Postdoc

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Internal Research Fellow (PostDoc) in Theory of Deep Learning
Job Requisition ID: 20829
Date Posted: 5 August 2026
Closing Date: 2 September 2026 23:59 CET/CEST
Publication: External Only
Type of Appointment : Internal Research Fellow
Directorate: Technology, Engineering and Quality
Workplace:
Noordwijk, NL
Location
ESTEC, Noordwijk, Netherlands
Our team and mission
This research fellowship will be undertaken in ESA's Advanced Concepts Team (ACT), ESA's internal research think tank for advanced space concepts and technologies. The ACT is a highly multidisciplinary group of postdoctoral fellows and early-career researchers who work in close partnership with leading universities to explore ideas that are still far from mainstream space engineering but could become disruptive in the future. The team operates to high academic standards, publishes in peer-reviewed journals and conferences, and has built a broad European and international network through its collaboration schemes and open-science activities. Through its research, the ACT provides ESA with early scientific insight on emerging trends and acts as a pathfinder for novel technologies and working methods across all space domains.
The overarching goal of this research fellowship is to develop and study advanced theoretical frameworks for deep learning, understand their mathematical foundations, and connect them to space-related technologies and missions. The focus is on building rigorous models that explain and predict the behaviour of modern neural networks, covering representation, optimisation, generalisation, robustness and reliability, while remaining sufficiently tractable to inform engineering practice. A key objective is to transform theoretical advances into practical insight and tools that can support analysis, design and decision-making for AI-enabled space systems, thereby bridging the emerging scientific theory of deep learning with high-impa...