Limited linguistic inclusivity in public health communication leaves many South African communities underserved, particularly regarding critical information on zoonotic diseases such as rabies. This pilot study addresses this gap by developing and evaluating AI-driven methods for delivering reliable rabies information to Sepedi speakers, a low-resource language group. The study presents a novel, curated Sepedi dataset of 60 question–answer pairs, created through a systematic pipeline: thematic analysis of authoritative English sources guided the synthetic generation of QA pairs, which were then translated and manually verified by a native-speaking expert. This dataset was used to compare two large language models, GPT-4o and Gemini-1.5 Flash, under both base and fine-tuned conditions. Evaluation used a human-centred rubric assessing fluency, accuracy, and cultural appropriateness. The findings reveal a key nuance in applying LLMs to low-resource domains. The base GPT-4o model, with strong foundational multilingual capabilities, outperformed all other configurations, including its own fine-tuned variant.
In contrast, fine-tuning provided a marked improvement for the less capable base Gemini model. This result indicates that fine-tuning can enhance weaker models; its benefits are not universal and may be outweighed by the strong zero-shot performance of state-of-the-art architectures when training data is scarce. The curated Sepedi rabies QA dataset will be released under an open licence to support future work in low-resource public health communication.
Background: HIPP is the HIFMB Integrative Postdoc Pool and publishes a thematic call for a cohort of early-career researchers once a year.
The HUMAN PROGRESS project aims to advance research in the natural sciences by drawing on methods, insights, and knowledge from across the humanities and social sciences. In doing so it also offers fresh frameworks of thinking for the humanities and social sciences, and works to develop the modern, integrated, and broadly interdisciplinary approach that is necessary to tackle complex environmental problems. Postdoctoral researchers funded under this project will work together as a team and in collaboration with experts from the arts, humanities, social and natural sciences. Our criterion of success is to make a demonstrable impact on research in the natural sciences by drawing on social data, humanities approaches, and ways of thinking. Along the way, all disciplines involved will have to adapt, extend, and to some extent automate their methodologies, to create impact in applications while maintaining a human perspective and mindset.
The title HUMAN PROGRESS is intended to provoke critical inquiry. It combines the progress-oriented thinking of the natural sciences and engineering with the word ‘human’ to invite critical reflection on how progress can be achieved that takes humans into account, from the initial phrasing of problems to the impacts of eventual solutions.
We invite applications for five positions, with the shared goal of leveraging modern approaches to bridge the gap between natural sciences and humanities and to strengthen existing collaborations between HIFMB and the Carl-von-Ossietzky University of Oldenburg.
Postdocs in the cohort will undertake independent projects in collaboration with a principal investigator and a strong interdisciplinary team of collaborators, while also meeting as a unit to work together on joint goals related to the overarching research topic.
Further information is available on the project website: HIPP 27: HUMAN PROGRESS – HIFMB Oldenburg
Project 2: Historical Observations of the Marine Environment
A central challenge of our time is discovering unknown knowns, that is, information contained in our datasets that we are not explicitly aware of. This project will examine processes of canonization that turn data into knowledge. In particular, we will consider a vast set of early modern maritime records and explore how the observations contained therein can be unlocked for modern environmental research. The project will combine established methods from historical research with modern approaches from machine learning and network science.
Your Tasks: The work will involve the analysis of historical documents, for example from the Prize Papers project; the creation of knowledge graphs using language models; and the automated analysis of knowledge graphs using methods from network science and cultural analytics.
Key questions include:
You’ll be working with an interdisciplinary team of experts that includes, among others, Dagmar Freist (History), Maximilian Schich (Cultural Analytics), Helmut Hillebrand (Biodiversity), and Thilo Gross (Network Science).
Further details: As a Helmholtz Institute, the HIFMB contributes to one of the Helmholtz Research Programs (currently ‚Changing Earth – Sustaining our Future‘) as part of Topic 6 (Marine and Polar Life). The cohort work will directly contribute to the scope and challenges of Topic 6 by researching how marine ecosystems will adapt and respond to human impacts (e.g., fishing and tourism), and by assessing options to remedy and mitigate human impacts. Within Topic 6, this cohort work attends especially to Subtopic 6.1, which is central to the HIFMB mission on „Future Ecosystem Functionality“, and Subtopic 6.4, „Use and Misuse of the Ocean“.
Your Profile: We are looking for an interdisciplinary researcher with relevant experience in history, especially in the analysis of historical records (from the 17th to the early 19th centuries), information science, with a focus on large-scale processing of cultural information, or related disciplines. The ideal candidate will have some experience in history, willingness to expand into other areas, and a general interest in team-oriented multidisciplinary research and in the generation, critical reflection, and representation of knowledge.
Requirements include:
Further Information:
Please note that the general conditions listed serve as a guide and may vary depending on the specific area of application.
For further information on the specific position, please reach out to Prof Dr Thilo Gross (thilo.gross@hifmb.de).
If you have any general questions about the application process, our Recruiting team will be glad to support you – please contact Elisabeth Wildt (bewerbungsmanagement@awi.de, +49 471 4831-2236).
In this overview you will find further contact persons for various matters.
This is a full-time position, limited to 3 years. It is also suitable for part-time employment. The salary will be paid in accordance with the Collective Agreement for the Public Service of the Federation (Tarifvertrag des öffentlichen Dienstes, TVöD Bund), up to salary level 13. The place of employment will be Oldenburg.
All postdocs will register with AWI’s postdoc office PROCEED and thus gain access to a set of tailor-made career development tools.
We offer:
AWI values diversity and actively promotes gender parity, as well as an open, inclusive environment that provides equal opportunities. We are convinced that diverse teams and a variety of perspectives enrich our work and our daily collaboration. In a continuous process of learning and reflection, we aim to ensure that all our employees can be themselves and feel a sense of belonging. We welcome applications from qualified people regardless of binary and non-binary genders, race and nationality, ethnic and social background, religion, age, disabilities, neurodivergence, sexual orientation, and other identities.
Applicants with disabilities will be given preference when equal qualifications are present.
AWI fosters work-family compatibility in various ways. And as a new international member of our team, you can be sure that we will help you settle in. Our Family Office and International Office will be glad to support you, even before you start at AWI.
We look forward to your application!
Please submit your application online only by July 20th, 2026. We kindly ask you to apply in English. No photo is required – we value your qualifications and experience.
Interviews are planned for the mid until end of August, 2026.
Employment for this post is subject to the provisions of the German Act on Fixed-Term Employment Contracts in Academia (Wissenschaftszeitvertragsgesetz – WissZeitVG). According to WissZeitVG § 2.1, researchers may in general be employed in Germany on fixed-term contracts for a maximum of twelve years before and after their doctorate. Previous academic fixed-term employment in Germany counts, in principle, towards this maximum limit, while academic positions abroad usually do not.
Applicants are required to submit an extended cover letter (max. 2 pages) describing their fit to the position and criteria, and complete the template CV provided (please do not submit a CV in another format).
If you are applying from abroad and are interested in academic positions in Germany, it may generally be helpful to check and possibly have your degrees recognized in advance via the ANABIN database (https://anabin.kmk.org/cms/public/startseite).
Reference number: 26/58/G/HIPP-b
This research center is part of the Helmholtz Association of German Research Centers. With more than 42,000 employees and an annual budget of over € 5 billion, the Helmholtz Association is Germany’s largest scientific organisation.
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