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Apologies for cross-posting.
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The Language and Dialogue Technologies (LanD https://land.fbk.eu/) group at Fondazione Bruno Kessler https://www.fbk.eu/en/ (Trento, Italy) in conjunction with the ICT International Doctorate School of the University of Trento https://iecs.unitn.it/ is pleased to announce the availability of two fully-funded PhD position:
1) TITLE: Dynamic Personas - Modeling the Evolution of Opinions and Values in LLMs
DESCRIPTION: Previous research has focused on equipping conversational agents with static, deep personas incorporating opinions, values, and beliefs to enrich dialogues. However, human interaction is dynamic; opinions can shift, and values may be expressed differently depending on context or interlocutor. Current persona-based models lack the ability to adapt or evolve during interaction. This PhD Thesis aims to address this gap by developing neural models capable of representing and evolving deep personas dynamically within a conversation. The research will investigate how to model the triggers and mechanisms of persona adaptation, such as responding to conversational context, user interaction history, or explicit feedback. The goal is to create agents whose expressed opinions and values can evolve coherently over time, leading to more natural, engaging, and long-term interactions. Evaluation will focus on the plausibility, coherence, and adaptability of the dynamic persona, with a focus on understanding how LLMs' personas impact user perception and interaction quality. Link to the call: https://iecs.unitn.it/education/admission/reserved-topic-scholarships#A5
2) TITLE: Knowledge-Driven Natural Language Generation for Combating Online Harms
DESCRIPTION: The pervasive spread of online misinformation and hate speech poses critical threats to societal well-being and democratic discourse. While neural language models (NLMs) show promise in generating counter-arguments and debunking fake news, they often suffer from limitations such as hallucination, knowledge scarcity, and a lack of sophisticated argumentative reasoning. This PhD project aims to overcome these shortcomings by developing novel knowledge-driven neural language generation pipelines. We will focus on integrating diverse external knowledge sources, principles from argumentation theory, and domain-specific features to enable the generation of factually accurate, persuasive, and ethically sound counterspeech. The goal is to build advanced generative AI systems that can effectively and safely mitigate the impact of both misinformation and hate speech online. Link to the call: https://iecs.unitn.it/education/admission/reserved-topic-scholarships#A6
COMPLETE DETAILS AVAILABLE AT: https://iecs.unitn.it/education/admission/call-for-application
IMPORTANT DATES: deadline for application is August 22nd, 2025, 04:00 PM (CEST)
FURTHER INFORMATION: For preliminary interviews, and should you need further information about the position, please contact me (guerini@fbk.eu)
Best Regards,
Marco Guerini