[Corpora-List] Ph.D. Program CMU-PORTUGAL in the area of Language and Information Technologies

[David Martins de Matos]

Apologies for multiple copies

                         Ph.D. Program CMU-PORTUGAL 
        in the area of Language and Information Technologies


The Language Technologies Institute (LTI) of the School of Computer
Science at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) offers a dual degree Ph.D.
Program in Language and Information Technologies in cooperation with
Portuguese Universities. This Ph.D. program is part of the activities of
the recently created Information and Communication Technologies
Institute (ICTI), resulting from the Portugal-CMU Partnership.

The Language Technologies Institute, a world leader in the areas of
speech processing, language processing, information retrieval, machine
translation, machine learning, and bio-informatics, has been formed 20
years ago. The breadth of language technologies expertise at LTI enables
new research in combinations of the core subjects, for example, in
speech-to-speech translation, spoken dialog systems, language-based
tutoring systems, and question/answering systems.

The Portuguese consortium of Universities includes the Spoken Language
Systems Lab (L2F) of INESC-ID Lisbon/IST, the Center of Linguistics of
the University of Lisbon (CLUL/FLUL), the Centre for Human Language
Technology and Bioinformatics at the University of Beira Interior
(HULTIG/UBI) and the linguistics group at the University of Algarve
(UALG). These four research centers (and the corresponding
Universities), share expertise in the same language technologies as LTI,
although with a strong focus on processing the Portuguese language.

Each Ph.D. student will receive a dual degree from LTI and the selected
Portuguese University, being co-supervised by one advisor from each
institute, and spending approximately half of the 5-year doctoral
program at each institute. Most of the academic part will take place at
LTI, during the first 2 years, where most of the required 8 courses will
be taken, with a proper balance of focus areas (Linguistic, Computer
Science, Statistical/Learning, Task Orientation). The remaining 3 years
of the doctoral program will be dedicated to research, mostly spent at
the Portuguese institute, with one or two visits to CMU per year.

The thesis topic will be in one of the research areas of the cooperation
program, defined by the two advisors. Two multilingual topics have been
identified as priority research areas: computer aided language learning
(CALL) and speech-to-speech machine translation (S2SMT). 

The doctoral students will be involved in one of these two projects
aimed at building real HLT systems. These projects will involve at least
two languages, one of them being Portuguese, the target language for the
CALL system to be developed and either the source or target language (or
both) for the S2SMT system. These two projects provide a focus for the
proposed research; through them the collaboration will explore the main
core areas in language technology.

The scholarship will be funded by the Foundation for Science and
Technology (FCT), Portugal. 

How to Apply 
The application deadline for all Ph.D. programs in the scope of the
CMU-Portugal partnership is December 15, 2007. 

Students interested in the dual doctoral program must apply by filling
the corresponding form at the CMU webpage 
http://www.lti.cs.cmu.edu/About/how-to-apply.html
The application form will be forwarded to the Portuguese University and
to the Foundation for Science and Technology.

Simultaneously, they should send an email to the coordinators of the
Portuguese consortium and of the LTI admissions (Isabel /Trancoso/Lori
Levin):

Isabel.Trancoso at inesc-id dot pt 
lsl at cs dot cmu dot edu

All questions about the joint degree doctoral program should be directed
to these two addresses.

The applications will be screened by a joint committee formed by
representatives of LTI and representatives of the Portuguese
Universities involved in the joint degree program. The candidates should
indicate their scores in GRE and TOEFL tests.
Letters of recommendation are due by January 3rd.

Despite this particular focus on the Portuguese language, applications
are not restricted to native or non-native speakers of Portuguese. 



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