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A 3-year PhD Research Fellowship is available at Simula Metropolitan Center for Digital Engineering (SimulaMet), within our research effort on the security and safety of AI systems.
Most security and safety work on AI happens where models are built. We work where they are used. As AI systems move into hospitals, public administration, and other consequential settings, the institutions that deploy them, and the regulators and auditors who oversee them, need to establish whether a given system is safe to use, independently of the vendor that built it. Today, they largely cannot. Closing that gap is the purpose of this position, and it grows more urgent as accountability shifts toward the organisations that deploy and audit AI, not only those that train it.
The PhD researcher will develop methods and tools for evaluating, red-teaming, and monitoring AI systems as they are actually deployed, large language models today, and increasingly agentic and multimodal systems. The work pursues two goals at once:
You would build on and extend an existing, openly released toolset: SimpleAudit (scenario-based safety auditing; a verified Digital Public Good), swarm-attack (adversarial swarm red-teaming), and the Moltbook Observatory (passive monitoring of deployed agents). The precise direction will be shaped together with you and the supervisory team, and may emphasise scenario-based auditing, adversarial and swarm red-teaming, agentic-system security, continuous monitoring, multilingual and national-language deployment, or the methodology of evaluation itself.
A defining strength of the group is direct collaboration with the institutions where failure is costly, including partners across Norwegian public health and the public sector, which grounds the work in real deployment contexts rather than synthetic benchmarks.
The purpose of a PhD fellowship is to qualify the candidate for work in positions that require a high level of scientific competence, leading to the award of a doctoral degree (PhD). The successful candidate will be admitted to a doctoral (PhD) programme at OsloMet - Oslo Metropolitan University. A career development plan will be drawn up for the fellow, and SimulaMet is responsible for following up on this plan and ensuring access to supervision and career guidance throughout the period. Research stays abroad and presentation of results at international and national conferences are facilitated and strongly encouraged, and training and support for academic writing are provided throughout the fellowship.
We will consider candidates who have (or will have completed before the start of the position) a Master's degree (or equivalent) in Computer Science, Applied Mathematics, or another relevant discipline. The applicant is required to demonstrate how the degree corresponds to the profile of the post. Other qualifications include:
Experience with large language models, red-teaming or adversarial testing, AI evaluation, or safety-critical / high-stakes application domains (e.g., healthcare, public sector) is an advantage but not a requirement.
Interested applicants are requested to submit the following:
Please note that all documents must be in English. Do not submit other certificates, articles, and the like unless specifically requested. If further documentation is wanted for assessment, you will be asked to submit it later.
Deadline: 15.08.2026
Short-listed candidates will be invited for an interview. Expected starting date before the end of 2026.
Additional enquiries regarding the position can be addressed to Michael A. Riegler, michael@simula.no, who leads the group.
This position is part of SimulaMet's research on the security and safety of AI systems. The group develops measurement theory and open, vendor-independent tools for evaluating, red-teaming, and monitoring AI systems where they are deployed, with a focus on high-stakes domains such as healthcare, the public sector, and education. Its open toolset includes SimpleAudit, a lightweight, local-first framework for multilingual safety auditing and red-teaming via adversarial probing, developed together with partners including the Norwegian Directorate of Health, alongside swarm-attack (adversarial swarm red-teaming) and the Moltbook Observatory (passive monitoring of deployed agents).
For more information about SimulaMet and the research environment, see here.
Employment for this position will be made according to the Security Act and the Act relating to Control of the Export of Strategic Goods, Services and Technology. Candidates who by assessment of the application and any attachments are considered to be in conflict with these regulations will not qualify for this position.
SimulaMet uses background checks in our recruitment process. All candidates are assessed for affiliation with high-risk countries. This assessment also considers whether the research area involves sensitive technologies, dual-use knowledge, critical infrastructure, or other security-relevant topics.
According to the Norwegian Freedom and Information Act (Offentleglova) information about the applicant may be included in the public applicant list, also in cases where the applicant has requested non-disclosure.