PhD position in Statistical Natural Language Processing

A PhD studentship is available in Statistical Natural Language Processing at the University of Sheffield. Details are given below. For further information please contact Trevor Cohn (tcohn@dcs.shef.ac.uk).

Starting: around October 2010
Length: three years
Stipend: £13,290 pa (UK nationals) or approx. £8,000 (EU nationals)
Closing date for applications is 16th April 2010.

The aim of this studentship is to design machine learning methods to better understand and utilise natural language texts. Natural language processing (NLP) now provides many indispensable tools for working with large unstructured text collections, allowing effective search, information extraction and translation. Language poses a number of difficult and interesting machine learning challenges. Statistical models can provide insight into the nature of language while also providing practical tools. Possible topics include grammar induction, parsing, language modelling, topic modelling and machine translation.

Candidates should have a strong background in Computer Science or Mathematics. Experience with machine learning and probabilistic modelling techniques is essential, and experience in graphical models and Bayesian inference would be highly desirable. A knowledge of linguistics and/or fluency in multiple languages would also be desirable, but is not strictly necessary.

For further details please visit
http://www.dcs.shef.ac.uk/~tcohn/studentship.html
or email Dr Trevor Cohn (tcohn (at) dcs.shef.ac.uk)