Higher Degree by Research Application Portal

Agentic visual reasoning aims to enable multimodal AI systems to actively interpret language, reason over visual scenes, and ground their decisions in specific objects, regions, and relations. It is a fundamental capability for multimodal artificial intelligence, with applications in embodied AI, robotics, human–AI interaction, and intelligent visual systems. The research will explore how vision-language models can actively reason, decompose complex grounding problems, interact with specialised visual tools or models, verify intermediate predictions, and improve their decisions through learning and feedback. Potential research directions include reinforcement learning for visual reasoning and grounding, neuro-symbolic reasoning and verification, compositional and part-level grounding, and efficient adaptation of multimodal foundation models. The project will aim to develop new methods that improve the accuracy, generalisability, interpretability, and data efficiency of multimodal visual reasoning systems.

Please email Dr. Xu (lian.xu@uwa.edu.au) with your CV (including publications), academic transcripts, and a short research statement outlining your research interests and fit for the project. 

Only shortlisted candidates will be contacted within one week. If you do not hear back, please consider your application unsuccessful and do not follow up.

Applicants must have at least one first-author publication at a top-tier venue in computer vision, machine learning, artificial intelligence, or a closely related field.

The selection process may conclude early if appropriate applicants are secured.

The Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) is a program of independent, supervised research that is assessed solely on the basis of a thesis, sometimes including a creative work component, that is examined externally. The work presented for a PhD must be a substantial and original contribution to scholarship, demonstrating mastery of the subject of interest as well as an advance in that field of knowledge. 

Visit the course webpage for full details of this course including admission requirements, course rules and the relevant CRICOS code/s.