The Italian Institute of Artificial Intelligence (AI4I) is launching the third round of its Call for Founding Heads of R&D Laboratories. The first two rounds have drawn applications from researchers and scientists from multiple countries, reflecting the international reach of AI4I’s research model and infrastructure.

In light of the number of applications already received, AI4I has decided to extend the application deadline in order to allow additional candidates to complete their submissions.
The new deadline for the Third Call is 28 February 2026, at 11:59 PM CET.

This new call targets young, talented, and ambitious researchers interested in establishing and leading one of the Institute’s core R&D Labs in key scientific domains of artificial intelligence. AI4I welcomes candidates working across a broad spectrum of AI areas — Symbolic AI, Generative AI, Agentic AI, Physical AI — as well as frontier research fields such as causality, neuro-symbolic AI, self-supervised learning, and AI for scientific discovery.

Applicants may propose new R&D Laboratories in areas including Reasoning & Planning, Edge Intelligence, Advanced Computer Vision, Synthetic Data, Human–Machine Interfaces, and Controls.

AI4I Labs operate at the intersection of foundational research and industrial deployment (TRL 2–6), supporting innovation across strategic application domains such as manufacturing, robotics, engineering, product development, software development and testing, autonomous and decision systems, and new material discovery.

Location: OGR Turin, Italy
Hybrid work: Flexible arrangements available
Updated deadline: 28 February 2026, 11:59 PM CET