Type de contrat : CDD
Niveau de diplôme exigé : Thèse ou équivalent
Fonction : Post-Doctorant
The Inria Centre at Rennes University is one of Inria's nine centres and has more than thirty research teams. The Inria Centre is a major and recognized player in the field of digital sciences. It is at the heart of a rich R&D and innovation ecosystem: highly innovative PMEs, large industrial groups, competitiveness clusters, research and higher education players, laboratories of excellence, technological research institute, etc.
Scientific Context
Recent advances in computer vision and sensor technologies enable the capture of rich, finely time-resolved information on individual behaviors. From video recordings and multimodal sensors, it is possible to detect behavioral state changes and estimate interactions between individuals within a group. These observations provide essential data for modeling both individual and collective dynamics.
From an interpretability perspective, Timed Automata (TA) can be used as a symbolic representation framework for behavioral states and their temporal transitions. While learning a timed automaton for an individual over a single period is feasible, applying this approach to long-duration or repetitive behaviors involving multiple individuals quickly becomes uninformative and difficult to interpret.
The objective of this postdoctoral position is therefore to define a “typical behavior” for each individual while preserving the temporal structures and interactions among individuals within a group.
Keywords
Neuro-Symbolic AI, Temporal Graph Representation Learning, Graph Variational Autoencoders, Clustering in Latent Space, Prototype Reconstruction, Behavioral Modeling.
Objective
The goal is to develop and integrate a methodological and software framework for the analysis of interacting timed systems. This will involve producing a prototype software platform combining latent representation learning, clustering, and behavior generation. This prototype will be particularly dedicated to analyzing behavioral dynamics and interactions among individuals, with a primary application to the study of animal welfare using multimodal data.
Funding
French PEPR Agriculture and ICT (WAIT4 project)
Duration: 15–18 months, depending on the start date
Starting date: As soon as possible from Spring 2026
Previous work developed within the team has already proposed a tool for learning timed automata from timed event sequence. The goal of this post-doctoral position is to develop a framework to analyze the behavior of multiple individuals using Timed Automata (TA). This framework will be scalable, interpretable, and generative, and will rely on embedding-based representations. The objective is to build compact representations of these behaviors while keeping important information about interactions and temporal constraints.
Our aim is to build compact and expressive behavioral representations of TA while preserving interactions and temporal dynamics while preserving their interactions and temporal dynamics. A previous approach already enables the learning of TAs from behavioral data over long periods, which can be reused and further refined to effectively capture interactions between individuals within a group.
Specifically, the objectives are:
1- Learning compact, latent representations of Timed Automata
2- Clustering and prototype extraction
3- Evaluation and validation
Expected Impact.
This project is expected to make significant contributions at both the methodological and applied levels.
Monthly gross salary amounting to 2788 euros
Attention: Les candidatures doivent être déposées en ligne sur le site Inria. Le traitement des candidatures adressées par d'autres canaux n'est pas garanti.
Please submit online : your resume, cover letter and letters of recommendation eventually
Sécurité défense :
Ce poste est susceptible d’être affecté dans une zone à régime restrictif (ZRR), telle que définie dans le décret n°2011-1425 relatif à la protection du potentiel scientifique et technique de la nation (PPST). L’autorisation d’accès à une zone est délivrée par le chef d’établissement, après avis ministériel favorable, tel que défini dans l’arrêté du 03 juillet 2012, relatif à la PPST. Un avis ministériel défavorable pour un poste affecté dans une ZRR aurait pour conséquence l’annulation du recrutement.
Politique de recrutement :
Dans le cadre de sa politique diversité, tous les postes Inria sont accessibles aux personnes en situation de handicap.
We are looking for a highly motivated candidate with a PhD in Computer Science, preferably with a focus on Artificial Intelligence or Machine Learning.
Inria est l’institut national de recherche dédié aux sciences et technologies du numérique. Il emploie 2600 personnes. Ses 215 équipes-projets agiles, en général communes avec des partenaires académiques, impliquent plus de 3900 scientifiques pour relever les défis du numérique, souvent à l’interface d’autres disciplines. L’institut fait appel à de nombreux talents dans plus d’une quarantaine de métiers différents. 900 personnels d’appui à la recherche et à l’innovation contribuent à faire émerger et grandir des projets scientifiques ou entrepreneuriaux qui impactent le monde. Inria travaille avec de nombreuses entreprises et a accompagné la création de plus de 200 start-up. L'institut s'efforce ainsi de répondre aux enjeux de la transformation numérique de la science, de la société et de l'économie.
Connectez-vous pour consulter des avis authentiques, des évaluations anonymes et des données salariales avant de postuler.