Open Postdoc Positions in Reinforcement Learning at INRIA Lille

The project team SEQUEL (Sequential Learning) of INRIA Lille, France, https://sequel.lille.inria.fr/ is seeking to appoint one Postdoctoral Fellow. We welcome applicants with a good mathematical background who are interested in theory and applications of reinforcement learning and bandit algorithms.

The research will be conducted under the supervision of Remi Munos, Mohammad Ghavamzadeh, and Daniil Ryabko.

The positions are research only and are for one year, with the possibility of being extended.

The starting date is flexible, from Spring 2011 to Fall 2011.

INRIA is France’s leading institution in Computer Science, with over 2800 scientists employed, of which around 250 in Lille. Lille is the capital of the north of France, a metropolis with 1 million inhabitants, with excellent train connection to Brussels (30 min), Paris (1h) and London (1h30).

The Sequel lab is a dynamic lab at INRIA with over 25 researchers (including PhD students) which covers several aspects of machine learning from theory to applications, including statistical learning, reinforcement learning, and sequential learning.

The positions will be funded by the EXPLO-RA project (Exploration-Exploitation for efficient Resource Allocation), a project in collaboration with ENS Ulm (Gilles Stoltz), Ecole des Ponts (Jean Yves Audibert), INRIA team TAO (Olivier Teytaud), Univ. Paris Descartes (Bruno Bouzy), and Univ. Paris Dauphine (Tristan Cazenave).

See: http://sites.google.com/site/anrexplora/ for some of our activities.

Possible topics include reinforcement learning, possibly with sparsity, random projections, bandit algorithms for solving large MDP, POMDPs.

Candidates must have a Ph.D. degree (by the starting date of the position) in computer science, statistics, or related fields, possibily with background in reinforcement learning, bandits, or optimization.

To apply please send a CV to remi.munos(at)inria.fr or mohammad.ghavamzadeh(at)nria.fr, or daniil.ryabko(at)inria.fr.

If you are planning to go to NIPS this year, we could set up an appointment there with Mohammad Ghavamzadeh.