(M/F) (PhD position) Conversational AI for Sustainable Agriculture: Natural Language Interfaces over Robotic and Analytical Farming Systems

Job Description

Thesis Subject

Agricultural robots, drones, IoT sensors, and smart farming platforms are transforming crop production by improving efficiency, reducing labour, and supporting more sustainable practices. However, these technologies generate large volumes of heterogeneous data and often require advanced technical expertise to operate, configure, and interpret.

This PhD project will explore how Large Language Models, Natural Language Processing, stream analytics, IoT infrastructures, and agricultural robotics can be combined to create human-in-the-loop conversational interfaces for smart agriculture. The goal is to allow farmers, agronomists, technicians, and researchers to command robots, query data, monitor operations, and receive explanations through natural language or voice-based interaction.

The research will focus on translating user requests into dataflows, API calls, analytics workflows, and robotic actions across distributed IoT, drone, and agri-robot ecosystems. It will address challenges such as semantic grounding, multimodal data interpretation, real-time stream processing, adaptive robot control, trust calibration, and edge-cloud deployment.

The expected outcome is an inclusive, interpretable, and sustainable AI-based architecture that makes advanced agricultural robotics and data analytics accessible to non-expert users while supporting more precise, accountable, and environmentally responsible farming.

Your Work Environment

Co-tutelle
- University Claude Bernard Lyon 1, Doctoral School Informatics and
Mathematics, Lyon, France (18 Months), Supervisor: G. Vargas-Solar
Laboratory LIRIS, CNRS, France
- University of Milan, Dept. of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences -
Production, Landscape, Agroenergy, Italy (18 Months), Supervisor: R.
Oberti

Secondments:
- ProBayes, Grenoble, France (Mohamad Othman Abdallah) months
1 month, conversational solutions and validation tests of experimental
results related to developed prototypes. Designing conversational solutions and for the assessment of conversational solutions after having worked on LLM's.
- ISOL, M. Penco, 24th Month, 4 months, working with autonomous
navigation system with the aim of simplifying the interaction
between farmers (or non-expert users) and agri-robots for programming field missions.

Constraints and risks

The PhD is to be developed in two institutions, and the person has to move from France to Italy. The requirements of two European institutions must be met under the co-tutelle agreement.

- MSCA Mobility Rule: researchers must not have resided or carried out their main activity (work, studies, etc.) in France for more than 12 months in the 36 months immediately before their date of recruitment
- All researchers recruited in a DN must be doctoral candidates (i.e. not already in possession of a doctoral degree at the date of the recruitment)
- An applicant must have received the equivalent of 300 ECTS with a major in computer science, data science/engineering, artificial intelligence, or databases, of which at least 60 ECTS correspond to a master's degree. The master's degree must be granted by a university recognised by the International Association of Universities.
-Scientific excellence to fit the PhD project
- Fluent (oral and written) English skills, as the project operates in the English language
- Knowledge of the language of the host country may be considered a merit
- Team-mindedness
Required skills
- MSc (or equivalent) in Computer Science / Data Science / AI with strong results
- Proven programming skills in Python and experience with ML / deep learning libraries
- Knowledge of data management, databases and/or big-data / streaming frameworks
- Interest in NLP and large language models, and motivation to work at the interface of AI, data engineering and sustainable agriculture
- Excellent command of English; ability to work in an international, interdisciplinary team

Desirable / nice-to-have skills
- Experience with IoT, robotics or cyber-physical systems, or at least a strong motivation to learn about
- Agri-robots and sensor infrastructures.
- Basic knowledge or strong interest in agriculture, agri-food systems or environmental sustainability (the domain knowledge can be acquired during the PhD, but curiosity here is important).
- Prior experience with conversational interfaces or NLP applications (chatbots, dialogue systems, question answering, text mining, etc.).
- Familiarity with version control (Git) and reproducible experiments.
- Previous exposure to interdisciplinary or collaborative projects (e.g. working with non-CS partners, applied projects in another domain).

Compensation and benefits

Compensation

4736 € gross monthly

Annual leave and RTT

44 jours

Remote Working practice and compensation

Pratique et indemnisation du TT

Transport

Prise en charge à 75% du coût et forfait mobilité durable jusqu’à 300€

About the offer

About the CNRS

The CNRS is a major player in fundamental research on a global scale. The CNRS is the only French organization active in all scientific fields. Its unique position as a multi-specialist allows it to bring together different disciplines to address the most important challenges of the contemporary world, in connection with the actors of change.

CNRS

The research professions