Positions for 2 PhD researchers or Postdocs in Computational Linguistics
Utrecht University, Faculty of Humanities, Utrecht Institute of Linguistics OTS (UiL OTS)
Deadline for application: May 5, 2010
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This is a summary of the full announcement, which is available at:
http://www.phil.uu.nl/~yoad/vici/ad-proj45.pdf
Vacancy Number: 681018
Job titles: 2 PhD researchers or Postdocs in Computational Linguistics (1 fte each)
Job descriptions:
These positions are part of a five-year research programme ‘Between Logic and Common Sense’ funded by The Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research NWO. The programme, supervised by Dr. Yoad Winter, investigates the interaction between word meanings and sentence meanings. While word meanings are often related to common sense aspects of semantic concepts, sentence meanings are derived using logical operators. The program will study how the two modules interact. Three issues will be addressed:
o How should formal theories of meaning be modified in order to incorporate methods and ideas from the study of common concepts?
o What psycholinguistic evidence exists that supports this interaction?
o How can interactions between word meaning and logical meaning be exploited for automatic treatment of reasoning in natural language (entailment)?
The program combines methods from formal semantics, experimental psycholinguistics and machine learning.
The programme comprises two post-doctoral projects and three PhD projects. See below for a link to the programme and general descriptions of the projects:
http://www.phil.uu.nl/~yoad/vici/ViciProgram-Winter.pdf
http://www.phil.uu.nl/~yoad/vici/projects.html
The current opening is for:
PhD/postdoc project 1 (vacancy no. 681018-A) starting date 1-10-2010 (negotiable, postdoc between 1 Oct 2010 and 1 Feb 2011):
The project, supervised by Dr. Yoad Winter, uses annotated entailments for developing machine learning algorithms that recognize unseen entailments on the basis of lexical/syntactic tools and resources. The learning model will use a semantically annotated corpus as a training set for acquiring semantically relevant information from other resources (e.g. WordNet, Penn Treebank, OpenCyc) when parsing entailments.
The project uses methods from computational linguistics and machine learning.
For a more detailed project description: http://www.phil.uu.nl/~yoad/vici/projects.html#4
PhD project 2 (vacancy no 691018-B) starting date 1-10-2010 (negotiable):
The project, supervised by Dr. Yoad Winter, develops a computational version of formal semantic theory that is suitable for annotating a corpus of textual entailments. The PhD researcher will accompany actual annotation of an entailment corpus. The annotated corpus and annotation principles will be used for the automatic acquisition of textual entailments.
The project uses methods from computational linguistics and formal semantics.
For a more detailed project description: http://www.phil.uu.nl/~yoad/vici/projects.html#5
Qualifications:
Applicants for a postdoc employment hold a PhD (completed at least one month prior to employment), as well as demonstrated capacities as an independent researcher, in the form of publications. You have a PhD in statistical computational linguistics, with specific experience in machine learning techniques.
Applicants for a PhD position have a MA/MSc in computer science or computational linguistics, with specific experience in machine learning techniques. Candidates expecting to graduate by 1 September 2010 can also apply.
How to apply:
Applications should include
o a letter of motivation
o a curriculum vitae including contact and personal details
o the contact details of two referees (names, affiliations and phone numbers or e-mail addresses).
o preferably: two reference letters
In addition, PhD applicants should include
o transcripts of academic results
o an MA thesis or (if the thesis is not available yet) some alternative piece of written work
In addition, postdoc applicants should include:
o PhD thesis
o one selected publication
E-mail applications (preferred) should be sent in pdf or doc format to GW_Humanitiesjobs@uu.nl and should specify the applicant’s name and the vacancy number 681018-A or B in the message as well as in the topic, include a list of attachments in the message, and specify the applicant’s name in each attachment’s title.
Written applications should be sent to the Personnel Department, Kromme Nieuwegracht 46, 3512 HJ Utrecht, The Netherlands. Please refer to the vacancy number 681018-A or B as well as to the website where you found this advertisement.
Deadline for application is May 5, 2010.
Interviews are planned on June 8, 2010.
