CLS 2026 PhD recruitment

Our group is looking for PhDs colloboration with the Max Planck Society, primarily the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems, Germany.

In our highly competitive CLS doctoral training program, fellows are co-supervised by one advisor from ETH Zurich and one from the MPI for Intelligent Systems in Stuttgart / Tübingen, the MPI for Informatics in Saarbrücken or the ELLIS Institute Tübingen. Each CLS fellow has a primary location (chosen based on interests and match) and conducts a mandatory 12-month exchange at the other location. All CLS Ph.D. fellows register as graduate students at ETH Zurich and, upon successful completion of their Ph.D. project, will be granted a doctoral degree by ETH. Fellowships are fully funded. The program language is English. 

Applicants should have a strong interest in doing basic research in areas such as:
Bio-inspired /Bio-hybrid Robotics, Biomechanics, Causal Inference, Computational Biology, Computer Graphics, Computer Vision, Control Systems, Deep Learning, Digital Humans, Earth Observation, Educational Technology, Efficient AI, Explainable AI, Graph Representation Learning, Haptics, Human-Computer Interaction, Human-Robot Interaction, Imaging Technology, Machine Learning, Medical Informatics, Medical Robotics, Natural Language Processing, Neuroinformatics, Optimization, Perceptual Inference, Probabilistic Models, Reinforcement Learning, Robotics, Safety, Security and Privacy, Scientific Machine Learning, Smart Materials, Social Questions, Soft Robotics, Statistical Learning Theory, Visual Analytics.

Applicants must further hold or expect to hold an excellent degree at Masters level in a relevant subject. Good written and spoken English is essential. We value diversity at our institutions. If you feel that you meet our requirements, we encourage you to apply. 

To join CLS in 2026, external page apply online. The application deadline is midnight (23:59 CET) on November 5, 2025.
Long-listed applicants will be asked to submit a 15-minute research video.  Short-listed applicants will be invited to the CLS2026 Selection Symposium in Tübingen on February 2-3, 2026.

Details are listed external page here