Nomination to the ELLIS PhD and Postdoc Program

ELLIS fellows, scholars or unit faculty may nominate PhD students or postdocs who are working with them to become ELLIS PhD students or postdocs in the academic, interdisciplinary or industry track. Note that postdocs of any track are currently only recruited via nomination.

Requirements

In order to become an ELLIS PhD student or postdoc in either track, the following requirements must be fulfilled:

  • The candidate:
    • For PhD students: The PhD student must have published at least one first-author paper in a top-tier venue in machine-learning driven fields: NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR, JMLR, CVPR, ICCV, ECCV, IJCV, PAMI, RSS, CoRL, TRO, IJRR, Science Robotics, ACL, EMNLP, KDD, AAAI, IJCAI, COLT, UAI, AAMAS, AISTATS, TACL, SIGIR, WSDM, ACM Multimedia, SIGGRAPH, KDD, ACM FAccT, Web Conference. The ELLIS Board decides on the list of conferences. In the case of the Interdisciplinary Track, if the paper is published in a venue that is not listed above, a brief justification should be enclosed to a) describe how it contributes to ELLIS and b) showcase that the venue is a top-tier one in the co-advisor’s field. Suggestions for new conferences or journals are welcome at info@ellis.eu but should be accompanied by arguments why they should be included; new suggestions will be reviewed twice a year.
    • For Postdocs: Membership in the ELLIS Society is required. Before being nominated to the ELLIS postdoc program, postdocs should first apply to become an ELLIS member, see ellis.eu/members for details on how to apply.
  • The advisors: 1 ELLIS fellow/scholar + 1 ELLIS fellow/scholar/member*, both based in Europe
    • For the list of ELLIS fellows/scholars, see ellis.eu/fellows; for the list of ELLIS members, see ellis.eu/members
    • *Supervision by two ELLIS members (who are not fellows/scholars) is not possible, unless one of the members belongs to the unit faculty. This entails that: (i) the person is an ELLIS member and belongs to an ELLIS unit; (ii) the person is entitled to supervise PhD students at the respective institution; (iii) the person is appointed by a Unit Director to participate in the central recruiting/nomination process.
    • *Supervision by a CIFAR Fellow or Canadian AI Chair Holder is possible; in that case, the second advisor should be an ELLIS Fellow/Scholar based in Europe.
    • *Industry Track - Membership exception: Industry representatives may become Industry Track advisors if they are not ELLIS fellows, scholars or members so long as they have published a paper together with the applying student as a result of their collaboration, in a top-tier venue in machine learning or related sub-fields (see list supra).
    • *Interdisciplinary Track - The co-advisor is a researcher in an area not strongly associated with machine learning/AI; if they are not an ELLIS fellow/scholar, they should hold a tenured position.
  • Degree (for PhD students): The degree must come from a European institution, unless one of the advisors is a CIFAR Fellow or Canadian AI Chair Holder.
  • Activity: Each track has specific exchange or time-sharing requirements (see below). In addition, it is expected that students will publish the results of their research in top-tier venues in machine learning-driven fields. Intellectual Property (IP) that is generated during the research project will be arranged between the host and the exchange institution. The ELLIS Society does not claim any IP.

Additional requirements specific to the academic track:

  • International exchange: PhD students in the program must visit an ELLIS fellow/scholar/member (co-supervisor) in another European* country for at least 6 months over the duration of their appointment. For postdocs, the min. duration is 6 weeks per year.
  • Location: The two institutions must be located in different European* countries. (*Exception: In the academic track, the co-supervisor can be based outside of Europe, but must in that case be an ELLIS fellow or scholar.)

Additional requirements specific to the industry track:

  • Time-sharing: PhD students in the program will spend a minimum of 50% of their time at the academic partner institution and a minimum of 6 months with the industry partner. This can be accumulative (e.g. 2 days per week) or consecutive (e.g. a block similar to an internship). For postdocs, the min. duration with the industry partner is 6 weeks per year. In case there already is an extensive collaboration between an industry and academic partner at one site, e.g. a jointly funded and run industrial-academic lab, slightly different regulations may apply (for more information: phd-industry@ellis.eu).
  • Location: The industry partner, industrial research lab, and industry advisor must all be based in Europe (regardless of HQ location), but can otherwise be in the same country/city as the academic partner.

Additional requirements specific to the Interdisciplinary Track:

  • Publications: during PhD thesis: papers can be published outside the Machine Learning community, for instance in top-tier venues in the co-advisor’s research field. In order to meet the publication criterion of the ELLIS PhD program, the target venue must be approved by the PhD Committee.
  • Location: The co-advisor may be based in the same university, city. If that is the case, the co-advisor should meet regularly with the student.
  • Time-sharing: The candidate will spend a minimum of 50% of their time with the primary advisor and a minimum of 6 months with the co-advisor if they are not in the same university/city. This can be accumulative (e.g. 2 days per week) or consecutive (e.g. a block similar to an internship)
  • Exchange: If the co-advisor is based in the same university/city, then there is no mandatory exchange period but the student is encouraged to spend at least one month abroad during their thesis.

Nomination process

1. ELLIS fellows, scholars or unit faculty may nominate PhD students or postdocs who are working with them to become ELLIS PhD students or postdocs. Note that the nomination can only be approved if the above requirements are fulfilled, see in particular the publication requirement for PhDs and the ELLIS membership requirement for postdocs.

  • Academic Track: fill out the nomination form (download PDF), including the Letter of Intent, and email the completed and signed form to phd@ellis.eu
  • Industry Track: fill out the nomination form (download PDF), including the Letter of Intent, and email the completed and signed form to phd-industry@ellis.eu and phd@ellis.eu
  • Interdisciplinary Track: fill out the nomination form (download PDF), including the Letter of Intent, and email the completed and signed form to phd@ellis.eu 

Note that only the ELLIS faculty advising the candidate can submit the nomination.

2. The nomination is reviewed. A decision can be expected within a month. 

Ideally, the onboarding of PhD students takes place within the first two years of the PhD thesis. Nominations submitted for students in their last year of PhD can still be accepted under certain conditions.

3. If the nomination is approved, the PhD student/postdoc is admitted to the ELLIS PhD and Postdoc program, and will be listed on the website (ellis.eu/phd-postdoc). Optionally, they can send a profile picture to phd@ellis.eu to be included on the PhD and postdoc page.

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