<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">
<html>
<head>
</head>
<body bgcolor="#ffffff" text="#000000">
More detail to be found on:<br>
<a href="http://staff.science.uva.nl/%7Esimaan/postdoc_adv.html"><small>Vacancy
postdoc reseacher, 2 years, computational linguistics/NLP</small><br>
</a><b><big><span style="font-weight: bold;" class="titlebar"><small><br>
<br>
<a href="http://www.illc.uva.nl"><small>The Institute for Logic,
Language
and Computation</small></a><small>, <a href="http://www.uva.nl">University
of Amsterdam</a>, has a vacancy for a<br>
</small></small></span></big></b>
<div id="cmsmessageblock" class="headerblock">
<h1 class="messageheader"><small><small>Postdoctoral Researcher </small></small></h1>
<h2 class="messagesubheader"><small>
</small>
<div class="subkop"><small><small>1.0 fte (38h per week)</small></small></div>
<small><small> <small> </small></small></small>
<div class="subkop"><small><small><small>For both internal and external
candidates</small></small></small></div>
</h2>
</div>
<span style="font-weight: bold;"><big>
Summary</big><br>
</span>
<ul>
<li><span style="font-weight: bold;"></span>Position:
POSTDOC
researcher</li>
<li>Duration: 2 years (full time, 38hrs per week)<br>
</li>
<li>Salary (gross per month): <span style="font-style: italic;">minimum
Euro 2379 and maximum Euro 3755 in the first year.</span></li>
<li>The Collective Employment Agreement of the Dutch Universities is
applicable.</li>
<li>Last date for application: February 15, 2009.<br>
</li>
</ul>
<a href="http://staff.science.uva.nl/%7Esimaan/postdoc_adv.html">
</a><br>
<span style="font-weight: bold;"><big><big><small><br>
</small></big></big></span><span style="font-weight: bold;"><big>Project</big><big
style="text-decoration: underline;"><br>
</big><span style="font-style: italic;"><big> </big></span></span><span
style="font-style: italic;"><big><small><br>
<span style="font-weight: bold;">Priors</span></small></big></span><span
style="font-weight: bold;"> for the </span><span
style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">Estimation</span><span
style="font-weight: bold;"> of Probabilistic
Grammars from </span><span
style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">Incomplete</span><span
style="font-weight: bold;">
Natural Language </span><span
style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">Data <small><small><br>
</small></small></span><small style="font-weight: bold;"><small><span
style="font-style: italic;"><big>VIDI
project
Sima'an [2007-2011]</big></span></small></small><br>
<span style="text-decoration: underline;"></span><br>
Abstract: The project aims at exploring the utility of available prior
knowledge
in specifying the model (hypothesis space) and the constraints on the
objective estimation function for unsupervised estimation of
probabilistic grammars for Statistical Machine
Translation and Statistical Parsing. <br>
This project addresses problems of unsupervised estimation in the
face of different kinds of incomplete data (parallel and monolingual
corpora):<br>
<ol>
<li>A raw text corpus,</li>
<li>A partially annotated corpus possibly with negative examples,
and </li>
<li>A raw in-domain corpus and an out-of-domain annotated corpus.<br>
</li>
</ol>
Corpus annotation is e.g., word-alignment, syntactic or semantic
structure.<br>
<br>
Example topics studied within the
project (see <a
href="http://staff.science.uva.nl/%7Esimaan/VIDI_project/Pubs_VIDI.html">project
related
publications</a>): <br>
<ul>
<li>Statistical machine translation
with hierarchical/syntactic structure, e.g., <a
href="http://staff.science.uva.nl/%7Esimaan/VIDI_project/Pubs_VIDI.html">statistical
estimation [Mylonakis
and Sima'an 2007 and 2008], lexical syntactic structrure [Hassan, Way
and Sima'an 2007 and 2008]</a><br>
</li>
<li>Statistical machine translation with morphological structure --
Work in progress 2009,<br>
</li>
<li>Inducing hidden compositional structure for machine translation
(possibly using syntactic structure) -- Work in progress 2009.<br>
</li>
</ul>
For more detail see: <a
href="http://staff.science.uva.nl/%7Esimaan/postdoc_adv.html">Webpage</a><br>
<br>
<br>
<span style="font-weight: bold;">Requirements<br>
</span><big><br>
We seek </big>a cooperative
yet independent<big> researcher who is passionate about</big><small> </small><span
style="font-style: italic;">empirical research, </span>statistical<span
style="font-style: italic;"><small>
</small>methods and NLP/CL. <br>
</span><span style="text-decoration: underline; font-weight: bold;"></span>The
following are the main requirements:<br>
<ul>
<li>obtained a Ph.D. recently (or
will obtain it in the very near future, in which case testemoney from
the
PhD thesis Supervisor is needed)</li>
<li>a strong background,
experience in and affinity with the largest subset of the following
areas:</li>
</ul>
<ol style="list-style-type: lower-roman; margin-left: 40px;">
<li>Computational Linguistics/Natural Language Processing working
with statistical methods</li>
<li>Machine Learning Applied to NLP with good knowledge of<span
style="font-style: italic;"> unsupervised statistical methods.</span><br>
</li>
<li>Statistical Machine Translation.</li>
<li>Unsupervised statistical methods for statistical Parsing.</li>
</ol>
<span style="font-weight: bold;">
</span>
<h3 class="paragraphheader">Appointment</h3>
<p>The appointment will be
on a temporary basis for a maximum period of 2 years. Based on a
full-time appointment (38 hours per week) the gross monthly salary will
range from € 2379,- to, at the most, € 3755,- , in the
first year depending on expertise and experience.</p>
<p>The Collective Employment Agreement of the Dutch Universities is
applicable.</p>
<span style="font-weight: bold;"></span>
<span style="font-weight: bold;"><span
style="text-decoration: underline;">Application<br>
</span></span>To <a
href="mailto:simaan@science.uva.nl?SUBJECT=VIDI-POSTDOC">Dr Khalil
Sima'an</a> by email (<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated"
href="mailto:k.simaan@uva.nl">k.simaan@uva.nl</a> with subject
heading:
VIDI-POSTDOC).<br>
The following documents (in pdf):<br>
<ol>
<li>Letter expressing interest<br>
</li>
<li>Curriculum Vitae </li>
<li>List of publications (possibly
including a downloadable pdf of your thesis)<br>
</li>
<li>Three letters of reference
sent directly by the referees to <a
href="mailto:simaan@science.uva.nl?SUBJECT=VIDI-POSTDOC">Dr Khalil
Sima'an</a> <br>
</li>
<li>Optional: Research plan (1 page)</li>
</ol>
Last date for application: February 15, 2009.<br>
<span style="font-weight: bold;"><span
style="text-decoration: underline;"><br>
For inquiries </span> contact <br>
<br>
</span> <a
href="mailto:simaan@science.uva.nl?SUBJECT=VIDI-POSTDOC">Dr Khalil
Sima'an</a>.<br>
<a href="http://www.illc.uva.nl/Research/research06b.php">Language
and Computation</a><br>
<a href="http://www.science.uva.nl/english/home.cfm">Computer
Science</a><br>
<a href="http://www.uva.nl/">University
of Amsterdam</a><span style="font-weight: bold;"><br>
</span>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
--------------
Khalil Sima'an
Institute for Logic, Language and Computation (ILLC)
University of Amsterdam
Tel#: +31-20-525 6573
Fax#: +31-20-525 5206
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="http://staff.science.uva.nl/%7Esimaan">http://staff.science.uva.nl/~simaan</a>
Address:
Plantage Muidergracht 24
1018 TV Amsterdam
The Netherlands
</pre>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
--------------
Khalil Sima'an
Institute for Logic, Language and Computation (ILLC)
University of Amsterdam
Tel#: +31-20-525 6573
Fax#: +31-20-525 5206
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://staff.science.uva.nl/~simaan">http://staff.science.uva.nl/~simaan</a>
Address:
Plantage Muidergracht 24
1018 TV Amsterdam
The Netherlands
</pre>
</body>
</html>