[alife] PhD position on Natural Communication and Artificial Intelligence

[Paul Vogt]

[Apologies for cross-posting. Please forward this mail to anyone who might be interested.]

Dear colleague,

The Tilburg School for Humanities at Tilburg University is recruiting a fulltime PhD-student on Natural Communication and Artificial Intelligence, for 4 years.

The job
Tilburg Center for Cognition and Communication (TiCC) invites applications for a four-year PhD position. The candidate will work on the 'Learning to Communicate via Social and Linguistic Interaction' project, which is funded by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) as part of the Natural Artificial Intelligence programme. The project is a collaboration with the Interaction Intelligence Group of Prof. Catholijn Jonker at the Delft University of Technology (TU Delft). The goal of this multidisciplinary project is to design, implement and analyse an agent-based model in which artificial agents use and learn language, and related communicative skills by interacting with each other. Learning will be based on input from a collection of video recordings, containing annotated observations of young children interacting with their caregiver. The selected candidate will be a member of the Department of Communication and Information Sciences in the School of Humanities of Tilburg University. He or she is expected to have written a PhD thesis by the end of the contract. The position can start as early as 1 January 2015, but the exact starting date is negotiable.

More information (in Dutch) on the Natural Artificial Intelligence programmeand this project is available at: http://www.nwo.nl/actueel/nieuws/2014/ew/nederland-investeert-in-kennis-over-kunstmatige-en-natuurlijke-intelligentie-voor-wereldwijde-oplossingen.html

Your profile
We seek a candidate with a (research) master in articial intelligence, cognitive science, computational linguistics, computer science or a related area, and with excellent, demonstrated programming skills. The ideal candidate should also have experience in designing cognitive and/or agent-based models. Furthermore, knowledge about statistics and language acquisition is a plus. The candidate should have excellent academic qualifications as indicated by their academic records, a strong interest in doing research, and a good command of oral and written English.

Employment terms and conditions
The selected candidate will be offered a temporary contract for one year. Upon a positive outcome of an assessment of the first year, a contract will be offered for the remaining 3 years. The selected candidate will be ranked in the Dutch university employment system (UFO) as PhD-student. The gross salary is € 2083,- per month in the first year and € 2664,- in the fourth year (for a full-time appointment and exclusive 8% holiday allowance and 8,3 % end year bonus). Researchers from outside the Netherlands may qualify for a tax-free allowance equal to 30% of their taxable salary. The university will apply for such an allowance on their behalf. The Faculty will provide assistance in finding suitable accommodation. The university offers very good fringe benefits (it is one of the best non-profit employers in the Netherlands), such as a facilities plan and options model for employment conditions and excellent reimbursement of moving expenses.

Information and application
Specific information about the vacancy and detailed information about the project can be obtained from the supervisors, dr. Paul Vogt, e-mail P.A.Vogt at uvt.nl, dr. Afra Alishahi, e-mail A.Alishahi at uvt.nl or Prof. Emiel Krahmer, e-mail: E.J.Krahmer at uvt.nl. Applying for this vacancy can only be done online. The application including a motivation letter and CV must be submitted via the link at the bottom of the page no later than November 10, 2014. If you receive this vacancy via e.g. e-mail, please look at the vacancy located at: http://www.tilburguniversity.edu/about-tilburg-university/working-at/wp.

Recruitment Code
Tilburg University applies the recruitmentcode of the Dutch Association for Personnel Management & Organization Development (NVP).


Paul Vogt
Assistant Professor
Tilburg centre for Cognition and Communication
Tilburg Univeristy
The Netherlands
http://www.paul-vogt.nl


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