Columbia Business School

Position Title/Short Description

Full Text of JOE Listing:

The AI Agents Initiative at Columbia Business School is pleased to announce its inaugural Research Fellowship. We seek to bring together multiple leading, early-stage postdoctoral scientists to Columbia to work on topics that advance the frontier of AI-driven sequential decision-making. Research Fellows will have agency over the problems they wish to pursue and are expected to collaborate on projects of mutual interest with Professors Ciamac Moallemi, Hongseok Namkoong, Tianyi Peng, and Daniel Russo. The position will be a one-year period renewable (by mutual agreement) up to three years.

An ideal candidate will have demonstrated ability and creativity in some of the following areas:

• Research and development of new ML methodologies or models from an engineering perspective, including but not limited to LLMs, agentic systems, multi-agent problems, trustworthy AI, and persona generation.

• Impact-driven agenda in sequential decision-making and reinforcement learning, such as developing computational methods grounded in empirical validation.

Applicants should have a Ph.D. (or defended by July 2025) in computer science, operations research, electrical engineering, or a related field from an accredited institution and have a record of being an outstanding scholar in every respect. Teaching is not required, but we expect that the applicant will participate in the broader mission of the AI Agent Initiative, for example, aiding in organizing conferences and panel discussions and outreach to students and industry practitioners.

Application Procedure
Applicants should submit (1) a cover letter; (2) a research statement describing research interests and accomplishments including research they would like to conduct (or have conducted) in AI and sequential decision-making; (3) a C.V.; and (4) two letters of recommendation. Please email the materials with subject line “Postdoc AI Agent Initiative” to dfi@gsb.columbia.edu. Applicants should submit a cover letter, research statement and CV in one email. Please do not send multiple emails. Letters of recommendation may be sent to follow in separate emails. Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis and should be submitted by February 15th, 2024, to receive full consideration. The anticipated start date for this position is September 1, 2025.

For Additional Questions Please contact ai-agents-initiative@gsb.columbia.edu with any questions.

For more information, please visit Digital Future Initiative at Columbia Business School.