The Language, Computation, and Cognition Lab (LaCoCo) https://lacoco-lab.github.io/home/ at Saarland Informatics Campus https://saarland-informatics-campus.de/en/ (Saarbrücken, Germany), directed by Michael Hahn https://mhahn.info/, invites applications for fully funded PhD and postdoc positions, with a flexible start date.
* RESEARCH AREAS * We’re especially excited about projects on:
* Mathematical foundations of large language models (LLMs), e.g., computational complexity, learning theory * New architectures and efficient reasoning for LLMs * Mechanistic interpretability * Theoretical foundations for AI safety
You’ll have substantial freedom to shape your topic within the lab’s scope.
Some representative publications from the past 3 years:
* Why are Sensitive Functions Hard for Transformers? (ACL 2024, https://aclanthology.org/2024.acl-long.800/) * InversionView: A General-Purpose Method for Reading Information from Neural Activations (NeurIPS 2024, https://openreview.net/forum?id=clDGHpx2la) * Contextualize-then-Aggregate: Circuits for In-Context Learning in Gemma-2 2B (COLM 2025, https://openreview.net/forum?id=rGNAyHReSg) * Discovering Interpretable Algorithms by Decompiling Transformers to RASP (ICML 2026, https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.08857) * On the Ability of Transformers to Verify Plans (ICML 2026, https://arxiv.org/pdf/2603.19954)
*ABOUT THE LAB*
Our research has been awarded an Emmy Noether grant (DFG), the Heinz Maier-Leibnitz Preis (DFG), and paper awards at ACL 2024 and Mechanistic Interpretability Workshop 2024. We regularly publish at top venues (e.g., 11 NeurIPS/ICML/ICLR papers over the past year).
Learn more about the lab at https://lacoco-lab.github.io/ https://lacoco-lab.github.io/https://lacoco-lab.github.io/
*HOW TO APPLY * Please follow the procedure here: https://lacoco-lab.github.io/joining/ https://lacoco-lab.github.io/joining/https://lacoco-lab.github.io/joining/
For questions, please contact Michael Hahn at mhahn@lst.uni-saarland.de
-- Michael Hahn Tenure-Track Professor Saarland Informatics Campus Saarland University Group: https://lacoco-lab.github.io/ Personal: https://www.mhahn.info/