The EU has awarded the University of Nova Gorica funding for a new machine learning project called SMASH. The project will last five years, during which time 50 postdoctoral researchers will be awarded fellowships to develop cutting-edge machine learning applications for science and the humanities.

The Slovenian Ministry of Science, Education, and Sport will co-fund SMASH, a training and research program. The University of Nova Gorica is a research-focused university near the Italian border with a female:male staff ratio of 51:49. The program aims to improve the career prospects of outstanding postdoctoral researchers from around the world while also strengthening Europe’s human capital in research and innovation.

SMASH will employ 50 talented individuals from five of Slovenia’s leading institutions, allowing them to expand their own research ideas based on access to the Vega HPC supercomputer’s data-science potential. This supercomputer is the first of its kind in the European Union’s multi-billion euro High-Performance Computing (HPC) initiative. SMASH will form a close-knit community with a single unifying concept: the use of cutting-edge data science to answer some of the world’s most challenging questions, with a diverse group of Associated Partners including top small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) from Slovenia and the EU, as well as world-leading institutions like UC Berkeley.

The project will focus on a wide range of research topics, including climate change predictions, the development of personalized medicine, finding answers to fundamental questions about our Universe, and delving deeply into the fundamentals of language and how we communicate. SMASH will ensure an open, transparent, impartial, and equal recruitment process, ensuring neutrality by delegating all selection authority to external experts.

The program will provide top-tier training in machine learning applications, which is one of today’s most transferable skills, as well as rich soft-skill training opportunities developed in collaboration with some of the world’s best experts, including CERN’s Learning Hub. The program’s impact will be felt for decades, both in the local research landscape and across Europe, as the researchers use their SMASH successes to advance their careers.

If you’re a postdoctoral researcher looking to advance your career, the SMASH project is looking for 15 fellows to join the team. The two-year prestigious Slovenian fellowship includes international secondments and covers research in areas such as machine learning for scientific applications, machine learning in open problems in fundamental physics of the Universe, computing for human and animal communication, machine learning in climate research, and personalized medicine and life sciences. The application deadline is April 15, 2023. More information and an application form can be found on the SMASH website.

Overall, the University of Nova Gorica’s SMASH project is an exciting initiative that will advance the field of machine learning while also contributing to important research in science and humanities.

DEADLINE: 15th April 2023

Where to apply? SMASH website: https://smash.ung.si/