Please send a cover letter explaining your background, relevant experience, and specific fit for our lab and this project, a CV, and three names of references to Pedro.Pinheiro-Chagas@ucsf.edu.
The NeuroAI Lab at UCSF, led by Professor Pedro Pinheiro-Chagas, invites applications for a postdoctoral position focused on desgining AI Voice Agents for Neurology Healthcare. The successful candidate will join a multidisciplinary team at the intersection of cutting-edge AI and cognitive neuroscience, with the aim to advance discovery, diagnosis, and care of neurodegenerative diseases. The main project will center on adapting a AI Voice Agentic System to administer the Clinical Dementia Rating (CDR). The CDR is a crucial tool in clinical trials for assessing the severity and progression of dementia. Co-led by experts Michael W. Weiner, M.D., and Rachel L. Nosheny, Ph.D., the collaborative project offers unique mentorship and high foundational impact.
The fellow will develop sophisticated generative AI systems featuring advanced speech-to-speech pipelines and iterative prompt engineering to optimize AI + CDR administration. The fellow will develop generative AI systems featuring advanced speech-to-speech pipelines, leveraging prompt engineering and alignment techniques to optimize reliability, transparency, and safety for CDR administration. Key responsibilities include: rigorous benchmarking with real and simulated users, automating participant interview, implementing automatic scoring, and maintaining security and regulatory compliance within the UCSF Verse HIPAA-compliant clinical AI platform. The candidate will be expected to advance AI alignment by ensuring model outputs robustly serve clinical intent and patient well-being, actively minimizing risks such as model hallucinations, and potential adverse events through regular testing and monitoring. This will involve continuous evaluation of model behavior and iterative system refinement to ensure that technological solutions align with user needs, ethical standards, and clinical goals. The fellow will also disseminate research through conferences and publications, contributing to both AI and neuroscience fields.