Post-doc positions available at the University of Trento (linguistics, machine learning, cognitive science)

3 (RENEWABLE) 2-YEAR POST-DOC POSITIONS AVAILABLE

The CIMeC-CLIC laboratory of the University of Trento, an
interdisciplinary group of researchers studying language and
conceptualization using both computational and cognitive methods
(clic.cimec.unitn.it) announces the availability of at least 3
(renewable) 2-year Post-Doc positions.

The scholarships are funded by a 5-year European Research Council
Starting Grant awarded to the COMPOSES (COMPositional Operations in
SEmantic SPACE) project (clic.cimec.unitn.it/composes), that
aims at modeling composition in distributional semantics. The project
is expected to have strong impact on both theoretical and
computational semantics, as well as their cognitive underpinnings.

* Desired Profiles *

Given the interdisciplinary nature of the project, we seek brilliant
researchers with any of the following backgrounds:

– Machine learning (areas of special interest: regression,
regularization methods, hierarchical regression, autoencoders,
curriculum learning, scaling machine learning to large multivariate
and multi-level problems, dealing with very sparse data);

– Psycholinguistics, experimental linguistics or cognitive science
(areas of special interest: systematic judgment elicitation methods
such as Likert scales or magnitude estimation, crowdsourcing,
semantic processing);

– Formal and/or computational semantics (areas of special interest:
Montague Grammar and its derivatives, distributional semantics)

Advanced programming and mathematical skills are required of
candidates from machine learning. Linguists and cognitive scientists
must possess at least basic programming skills and a reasonable
knowledge of statistics.

If you think that your background is relevant to the research program
outlined on the project website (clic.cimec.unitn.it/composes) and you
have good programming and quantitative skills, please do get in touch
even if you do not fit any of the profiles above.

All researchers are expected to have an interest in working in an
interdisciplinary environment.

* The Research Environment *

The CLIC lab (clic.cimec.unitn.it) is a unit of the University of
Trento’s Center for Mind/Brain Sciences (CIMeC,
http://www.unitn.it/en/cimec), an English-speaking, interdisciplinary
center for research in brain and cognition whose staff includes
neuroscientists, psychologists, (computational) linguists, computer
scientists and physicists.

CLIC consists of researchers from the Departments of Computer Science
(DISI) and Cognitive Science (DISCoF) carrying out research on a range
of topics including concept acquisition, corpus-based computational
semantics, combining NLP and computer vision, combining brain and
corpus data to study cognition, formal semantics and theoretical
linguistics. Modeling composition in distributional semantics is
increasingly a focus point of CLIC, and activity in this area will
grow considerably thanks to COMPOSES funds.

CLIC is part of the larger network of research labs focusing on
Natural Language Processing and related domains in the Trento region,
that is quickly becoming one of the areas with the highest
concentration of researchers in NLP and related fields anywhere in
Europe.

The CLIC/CIMeC laboratories are located in beautiful Rovereto, a
lively town in the middle of the Alps, famous for its contemporary art
museum, the quality of its wine, and the range of outdoors sport and
relax opportunities it offers:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rovereto

* Application Information *

For further information, please send an expression of interest to
marco.baroni(at)unitn.it, attaching a CV. Positions are available
immediately and open until filled.