The Ruhr area, one of Europe's largest metropolitan regions, provides attractive career opportunities for outstanding scientists and scholars from around the world. In 2021, Ruhr University Bochum, TU Dortmund University, and the University of Duisburg-Essen established the Research Alliance Ruhr to consolidate their pioneering international research on humanity's most pressing challenges. This alliance encompasses four research centers and a college, marking a new chapter in our enduring collaboration as the University Alliance Ruhr (UA Ruhr), a vibrant community of 14,000 researchers and 120,000 students located in the heart of Germany. Join us and contribute to cutting-edge research at RC Trust, where innovation meets real-world impact. As part of the Research Alliance Ruhr, the Research Center for Trustworthy Data Science and Security unites the expertise of its member universities to bridge the gaps between Psychology & Social Sciences, Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning, Data Science & Statistical Learning, and Cybersecurity & Privacy. The Research Alliance Ruhr, a collaborative initiative by the three major universities in the Ruhr area, was established through the Ruhr Conference. It encompasses four research centers: "One Health Ruhr," "Chemical Sciences and Sustainability," "Trustworthy Data Science and Security," and "Future Energy Materials and Systems." Additionally, it includes a "College for Social Sciences and Humanities." The Research Alliance Ruhr is appointing up to 50 research professors and offers numerous positions for research assistants. Join us in creating innovations for the future within Europe's most densely populated yet greenest university landscape, where a diverse range of scientific and industrial partners are readily accessible. The position is embedded in the collaborative research project DAISY – Data Protection and Employee Interests in AI-as-a-Service Systems, funded by the German Federal Ministry of Research, Technology and Space (BMFTR) under the program "Plattform Privatheit – IT Security Protects Privacy and Supports Democracy." Organizations increasingly purchase AI capabilities as ready-made cloud services (AI-as-a-Service, AIaaS) without any insight into the underlying architectures, data flows, or security mechanisms. DAISY investigates how such systems can be adopted in a privacy-compliant and employee-centered way, combining computer science, psychology, and organizational science. Together with the University of Duisburg-Essen, Witten/Herdecke University, and the Bochum Economic Development Agency as application partner, the consortium examines the mental models that decision-makers and employees hold of AIaaS, contrasts them with the actual technical properties of these systems, and derives measures to bring the two into alignment.
This position covers the technical perspective of the project at Ruhr University Bochum: characterizing real-world AIaaS systems empirically, condensing their privacy- and security-relevant properties into risk profiles, and developing and evaluating privacy-compliant AIaaS configurations built from open-source components. The work follows a human-centered perspective on security and privacy, combining technical analysis with empirical research on the people who use these systems. The position is designed to lead to a doctorate and is embedded in the graduate structures of RC Trust. This is an on-site position in Bochum; regular presence at the university is expected. Remote work is possible on individual days by arrangement, but the position cannot be carried out fully remotely.
