Fellowship Researcher IPN/LIS/2025/CON40

Organisation/Company Instituto Pedro Nunes Research Field Engineering » Computer engineering Researcher Profile First Stage Researcher (R1) Positions Master Positions Country Portugal Application Deadline 23 Dec 2025 - 23:59 (Europe/Lisbon) Type of Contract Temporary Job Status Full-time Hours Per Week 40 Offer Starting Date 1 Jan 2026 Is the job funded through the EU Research Framework Programme? Other EU programme Reference Number IPN/LIS/2025/CON40 Is the Job related to staff position within a Research Infrastructure? No

Offer Description

Laboratory for Informatics and Systems of Instituto Pedro Nunes (LIS) opens a fellowship for researcher for a period of 6 months and a monthly value of 1309. 64 € , to support R&D in the field of Computer Engineering, under the guidance of LIS’s researchers, in the framework of Project Co
Participation - Next Generation Platform for Participatory Processes , Reference number COMPETE2030-FEDER-02208000,
- financed by European Unions´s Portugal 2030 (Centro 2030) programme.

The grant is destined to Masters in Computer Engineering or equivalent, enrolled in doctoral programmes or non‑degree courses integrated into the educational project of a higher education institution.

The goals of the grant are:

Participatory processes (PP), such as participatory budgeting, are becoming increasingly relevant globally, evolving from simple voting to co‑creation and co‑participation dynamics. Current platforms supporting these processes need to evolve to keep pace with this transformation, particularly with regard to strengthening fraud detection mechanisms. Recent electoral processes have highlighted the risks of illegitimate interference by economic, political or other interests. These malicious attitudes also extend to PP, which are subject to risks such as manipulation of results, submission of false, malicious or fragmentary proposals, and the use of toxic language. The absence of advanced systems for detecting these risks affects the transparency and credibility of these processes. Identifying patterns of malicious behaviour or irregularities requires tools based on sophisticated data analysis and natural language processing (NLP) techniques, which can consider elements such as sentiment analysis, identification of suspicious behaviour patterns, and identity authentication.

This scholarship competition is part of the Co
Participation project, in which IPN is collaborating on the development of an innovative technological platform that, among other features, aims to incorporate mechanisms for detecting malicious activities. The scholarship holder will be expected to research, design and develop this module, integrating:

• (i) Mechanisms to automatically identify harmful language patterns based on large language models (LLMs) and sentiment analysis using GPT‑4 as a reference model;
• (ii) Fact‑checking mechanisms based on state‑of‑the‑art solutions such as Google Fact Check Tools and guardrail systems based on Guard
  Rails AI.

The project is already in the development phase, with access to data and infrastructure for the creation and testing of solutions.

Work Plan

• State of the art and requirements analysis: In-depth study of LLMs and NLP techniques and sentiment analysis. Survey and detail of requirements for the module to be developed.
• Design and specification: Definition of the detailed architecture of the modules associated with the detection of malicious activities. Specification of algorithms, data models, and interfaces. Research and selection of the tools and technologies to be used.
• Initial development and prototyping: Start of development of the core components of the malicious activity detection systems. Creation of initial prototypes for concept and algorithm validation. Preparation of datasets for training and testing.
• Implementation and advanced development: Complete development of the detection modules, including training of the associated models.
• Integration and Testing: Integration of the developed modules into the main platform. Conducting exhaustive tests to evaluate the functionality, robustness, performance, and accuracy of the systems. Refinement and optimisation of algorithms and interfaces based on test results.
• Documentation: Preparation of detailed technical documentation for the developed modules.

The work will be carried out at the Laboratory for Informatics and Systems of Instituto Pedro Nunes (LIS), under the scientific supervision of Professor Marília Curado.

The applications must be submitted by the website www.ipn. pt from 2025‑12‑10 until 2025‑12‑23, with all the documents required.

The selection will be performed by an evaluation board, and can include an interview to the candidates. The selection criteria will be as follows:

• A – CV evaluation (0‑100 points) – the candidate must obtain at least 50/100 points to proceed to the following evaluation stage;
• B – Technical evaluation test (0‑100 points) – the candidate must obtain at least 50/100 points to proceed to the following evaluation stage;
• C – Interview (0‑100 points) – The candidate must achieve a minimum of 50/100 points to be eligible for ranking.

The evaluation Committee is composed by:

Every candidate will be notified by email with the result of the evaluation. In the case of an unfavorable decision, the candidates have a period of 10 working days to express their opinion, in a preliminary hearing.

Masters in Computer Engineering or equivalent, enrolled in doctoral programmes or non‑degree courses integrated into the educational project of a higher education institution.