Post-Doctoral Fellow

University of Colorado • Aurora, CO

4d • Hybrid

About The Position

The Gao Lab at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus welcomes applications for a Postdoctoral Fellow focused on foundational and system-level research in large language models.
Dr. Gao's lab advances foundational and system-level language technologies with the goal of enabling reliable, efficient, and clinically meaningful real-world applications, particularly in medicine and health. The lab conducts method-driven research in natural language processing (NLP) and artificial intelligence (AI), with an emphasis on LLM reasoning, uncertainty quantification, interpretability, and knowledge-augmented modeling. By studying and improving how LLMs are trained, calibrated, and deployed, the lab aims to build principled AI systems that can be integrated into high-stakes healthcare environments. We seek candidates whose research interests and working style align with a collaborative and principled research environment. Additional information about the lab’s philosophy and values is available on the lab website (www.larknlp.com).
Example research directions include (but are not limited to):
• Methodological advances in large language models for efficiency, reliability, and controllability
• Learning and calibration strategies for uncertainty-aware language model prediction
• Knowledge-augmented and neuro-symbolic approaches for language-based reasoning
• Evaluation and design of LLM-based systems for high-stakes real-world applications
Responsibilities also include contributing to the ideation and design of new studies, managing data cleaning and wrangling efforts, and preparing scientific communications such as abstracts, oral and poster presentations, scientific manuscripts, and research grant proposals. The projects within the lab aim to transform healthcare through AI by improving the accuracy and efficiency of medical diagnostics and patient care documentation processes.
The postdoc and PI will jointly envision projects tailored to the fellow’s skillset and long-term career goals. Postdocs will be expected to carry out computational research, develop novel AI and NLP methods, analyze data, and disseminate their findings, software, and data to the biomedical community. The postdoc will also join a highly interactive, supportive, and interdisciplinary group of faculty, staff scientists, postdoctoral fellows, engineers, and students in Department for Biomedical Informatics. They will enjoy access to state-of-the-art equipment and facilities on the Anschutz Medical Campus.
The Department of Biomedical Informatics fosters a thriving community of researchers at the University of Colorado School of Medicine who are inventing and deploying advanced analytics and knowledge integration approaches. The goal of building this community is to make the Anschutz Medical Campus a leader in translating data into advances in research practice, health care delivery, and population health and in scaling these to provide nationwide benefit through innovative technologies.

Requirements

• PhD in Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence, Computational Linguistics, Machine learning, Computer Engineering or related fields
• Proficiency in scientific communication as evidenced by peer-reviewed conference proceedings (journals) manuscripts and presentations at national or international conferences.

Nice To Haves

• Strong experience implementing and training deep learning models in PyTorch, with attention to efficiency, scalability, and reproducibility
• Demonstrated experience with NLP state-of-the-art models (Deepseek, Llama, Mistral, GPT-4, BERT etc)
• Experience with large language models beyond prompt engineering, such as fine-tuning, distillation, calibration, or representation analysis
• Familiarity with multimodal modeling, programmatic or structured generation, or model-based content generation
• Experience with retrieval-augmented generation, agentic or multi-stage workflows, or knowledge-integrated models
• A strong publication record in top-tier AI/NLP venues (ACL, EMNLP, NeurIPS, ICLR, AAAI, etc.)
• Experience with biomedical dataset and electronic health record is preferred, but not a must

Responsibilities

• Investigate literatures to identify existing solutions and the problem
• Develop and apply state-of-the-art natural language processing algorithms and models to multimodal data (unstructured and structured text, knowledge graph, etc)
• Design and conduct experiments to test hypotheses with applied statistics
• Analyze and interpret results, present research progress to meetings with PIs, and publish results to peer-reviewed manuscripts in conference proceedings and journals
• Assist PI with grant writing
• Present research progress at lab meeting and project meetings with collaborators
• Prepare abstract/manuscripts for journal and conference paper submission, present at the local and international conferences.
• Mentor and train other group members, such as graduate and undergraduate students.
• Pursue computational, experimental, and clinical collaborations.
• Work with the PI to develop and progress the candidate’s career goals.
• Attend career development seminars and networking events.
• Complete required research training.
• Perform general administrative duties as requested by the PI.

Benefits

• The University of Colorado offers a comprehensive benefits package.
• The University of Colorado provides generous leave, health plans and retirement contributions that add to your bottom line.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Entry Level
• Education Level: Ph.D. or professional degree
• Number of Employees: 11-50 employees