Postdoctoral Research Scholar

Arizona State University • Tempe, AZ

1d • Onsite

About The Position

The Center on Information and Narrative Complexity (CINC) at Arizona State University invites applications for a full-time postdoctoral research scholar as part of a funded grant project that will support the development of computational models, analytical frameworks, and research with applications in both fundamental science and operational settings. The project develops an AI-powered framework that helps uncover the underlying narratives that make messages resonate with different audiences and measures how well communications align with an audience's worldview. Over time, it combines these capabilities into a Narrative Codex Framework (NCF) that can both decode the narratives driving influence campaigns and suggest more effective, narrative-aligned communication strategies for human review.

Requirements

• Earned (completed) doctorate degree in computational social science, data science, complex systems, computer science or a closely related field at time of appointment.
• Experience in programming (Python, R, or similar) and basic data analysis practices.
• Interest or experience in modeling belief dynamics, information environments, communication and/or narrative analysis.
• Ability to work independently and as part of an interdisciplinary team.

Nice To Haves

• Experience with complex systems approaches and collaborating across disciplinary boundaries.
• Familiarity with large language models (LLMs) or natural language processing (NLP) for social science applications beyond prompt engineering.
• Interest in conducting research relevant to defense and intelligence applications.
• Python, including common NLP and machine learning libraries (e.g., spaCy, Hugging Face, scikit-learn, PyTorch)
• Running jobs on high-performance computing (HPC) clusters
• Working with Google Cloud Platform
• Building applications/programs with large language model (LLM) APIs
• Statistical analysis, including intercoder reliability and evaluation of classifier accuracy
• Software engineering practices ( e.g., version control, testing, code review)

Responsibilities

• Contribute to the development and analysis of computational and social systems from behavioral, societal, and human-centered perspectives.
• Partner with software engineers, data scientists, and social scientists to co-develop NCF methods that draw equally on computational and social science expertise.
• Support the development of scalable, reproducible model and data pipelines for research and experimentation.
• Work with faculty investigators and research scientists to transition research methods into a robust, well-documented, and deployable NCF framework.
• Support co-mentoring of students and research scientists, providing guidance to ensure high-quality contributions and timely progress

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Entry Level
• Education Level: Ph.D. or professional degree