Privacy-Aware and Acceptable Video-Based Technologies and Services for Active and Assisted Living

VisuAAL is a transdisciplinary and cross-sectoral European project, addressing the secure use of video-based AAL technologies to deliver effective and supportive care to older adults managing their health and wellbeing. Researchers from the fields of Computer Science, Engineering, Healthcare, Law, Business and Sociology are building the project community.

See: https://www.visuaal-itn.eu/

Apply directly here: https://www.visuaal-itn.eu/form/applications

Funding: Marie Skłodowska-Curie Innovative Training Networks

Algorithmic governance of care

Algorithmic decision making became enmeshed into daily life. In active assisted living data is analysed and interpreted with the intention to support people in various ways: recognizing behaviour, events, emotions, needs; creating ambient intelligence; predicting activities and proposing treatment strategies. Machine learning as prerequisite of intelligence is applied. Taking into account recent success, it can be claimed, that not only a set of specific algorithms but also a lot of example data is needed to run the learning methods.  And usually those building the algorithms are not trained in law or the social sciences, while experts in discrimination law do not know how to audit modern machine learning algorithms. Further complicating matters is that even experts in computer science and mathematics often struggle with interpreting the output of many modern machine learning algorithms. Unsurprisingly assessing and guaranteeing fairness and transparency in machine learning is a wide open research and that is the topic of the PhD proposal.

Eligibility criteria

• Applicants should hold a master’s degree relevant to the project(s) they apply for
• Applicants should not have been awarded a PhD degree
• At the time of recruitment, applicants should have less than four (full time equivalent) years of experience within a research career (measured from the date when the applicant obtained the first degree entitling him/her to embark on a doctorate, even if a doctorate was never started or envisaged)
• Applicants must not have resided or carried out their main activity (work, studies, etc.) in Austria  for more than 12 months in the 3 years immediately before the recruitment date
• Proficiency in written and spoken English
• Start in March 2021
• Full contract for 3 (+1) years

Contact martin.kampel@tuwien.ac.at