You will be based in the socially aware AI (SAAI) group (https://www.umu.se/en/research/groups/socially-aware-ai/). This group is world famous for its work on sophisticated social simulations ranging from the effectiveness of restrictions in the covid crisis to support for sustainable neighbourhoods. The group is specifically well-known for its formalizations and implementations of social concepts that govern people’s lives, such as routines, practices, norms, conventions, roles, etc. With this position we aim to develop multi-agent systems in which the agents are influenced by norms and other social rules, while learning from their experience using these social concepts and thus also slowly shaping new norms and conventions. The theoretical foundations will be based on existing work from our group, but especially the interaction between learning behaviour and social rules is to be explored. In order to test the usability of the developed models we aim to have at least one use case related to social simulation for policy making.

One postdoc position has a focus on engineering social simulations, and the second has a focus on extreme contexts.

For engineering social simulations (https://umu.varbi.com/en/what:job/jobID:505115/type:job/where:4/apply:1), the successful candidate is expected to contribute to research in SAAI by creating tools with which social constructs like norms and practices can be designed and implemented for social simulations. It is important to make a link between social theories and computational structures. The social theory is needed to create general usable computational tools, while the computational tools should be usable and efficient. Part of the research will be the connection of empirical, ethnographic methodologies with agent based social simulation methodologies.

For extreme contexts (https://umu.varbi.com/en/what:job/jobID:505077/type:job/where:4/apply:1), the successful candidate is expected to contribute to research in SAAI by modelling the response of organizations to extreme events. This involves modelling both the formal and the informal organizational structures and communication. The aim is to see what types of structures, routines and personal characteristics play a decisive role in the response of an organization to extreme events. The research will be done in close collaboration with the postdoc at USBE. Part of the research will be the connection of empirical, ethnographic methodologies with agent based social simulation methodologies.