<span style="font-family:times new roman,serif"><font><span>Applications
are invited for two 3-year Early Stage Researcher PhD positions in
corpus-based approaches to machine translation. The positions have been awarded
as part of the new EU FP7 Marie-Curie Initial raining Network EXPERT (<a href="http://clg.wlv.ac.uk/projects/EXPERT/">http://clg.wlv.ac.uk/projects/EXPERT/</a>),
concerned with the exploitation of empirical approaches to machine translation,
including statistical machine translation and example-based machine translation.<span> </span>The EXPERT project puts together researchers
from six European universities (The University of Sheffield, Universidad de
Malaga, Universitaet des Saarlandes, Dublin City University, Universiteit van
Amesterdam, and University of Wolverhampton) and five translation services and
technology providers (Pangeanic, Hermes and Translated, Celer Soluciones and
WordFast).<br></span></font></span>
<p class="" style="margin-right:18pt"><span style="font-family:times new roman,serif"><font><span>The two projects allocated to the University of
Sheffield are (i) learning from human feedback, which is concerned about
methods to collect and incorporate human feedback into translation systems to
improve the quality of translations; and (ii) estimating the quality and confidence of
corpus-based approaches to machine translation and the quality of translated
texts. <br></span></font></span></p><p class="" style="margin-right:18pt"></p><p class="" style="margin-right:18pt">
</p><p class="" style="margin-right:18pt"><span style="font-family:times new roman,serif"><font><span>The work in both projects will focus on statistical and
machine learning techniques to address the problems, but it will also involve aspects
of human translation studies, based on a strong interaction with some of the
partners in EXPERT. The research will be conducted as part of the Natural
Language Processing research group in Sheffield, with opportunities for
collaborative work with several of the leading universities and industrial
partners in EXPERT, and with the expectation of a 6-month secondment to 2-3
partners in this project. Further information
about the research group can be found at: <a href="http://nlp.dcs.shef.ac.uk">http://nlp.dcs.shef.ac.uk</a></span></font></span></p>
<p></p>
<p class=""><span style="font-family:times new roman,serif"><font><span>The successful individual will be employed as a
salaried researcher at the University of Sheffield, while studying towards
his/her PhD. Salary rates and additional mobility and training allowances
are as per the Marie Curie programme (see Annex 3 of this document <a href="http://ec.europa.eu/research/participants/portal/download?docId=31562">http://ec.europa.eu/research/participants/portal/download?docId=31562</a>,
page 69). For employment in the UK, the reference figure for gross <b>salary is 51,062 euros/year, </b>plus additional contribution towards mobility and training.<br></span></font></span></p><p class=""><span style="font-family:times new roman,serif"><font><span>Please check Section III.3 of the following link for further information
on the Marie Curie scheme regarding eligibility criteria: <a href="ftp://ftp.cordis.europa.eu/pub/fp7/docs/fp7-mga-annex3intramulti_en.pdf">ftp://ftp.cordis.europa.eu/pub/fp7/docs/fp7-mga-annex3intramulti_en.pdf</a>. In particular, candidates cannot have lived in the UK for more than 12 months
in the 3 years immediately prior to their appointment. <br></span></font></span></p><p class=""><span style="font-family:times new roman,serif"><font><span></span></font></span></p><p class=""><span style="font-family:times new roman,serif"><font><span>Applicants should hold a good honours degree in a relevant field of study (e.g. computer science, engineering, mathematics) and have experience in natural language processing, machine translation or related area. They should also have a solid background in mathematics/statistics and excellent programming skills (C/C++, Java, Python/Perl, etc.). See the job specification for more details on the expected profile: http://<font>www.</font><a href="http://dcs.shef.ac.uk/~lucia/resources/EXPERT_Marie_Curie_Early_Stage_Researcher.pdf">dcs.shef.ac.uk/~lucia/resources/EXPERT_Marie_Curie_Early_Stage_Researcher.pdf</a> <br>
</span></font></span></p><p class=""></p><p class="">
</p><p class=""><span style="font-family:times new roman,serif"><font><span>The post is fixed term for three
years with a start date of January 2013 or soon after. </span></font></span></p>
<p></p>
<span style="font-family:times new roman,serif"><font>Closing Date: 10th December 2012<br><br>For applications: <a href="http://www.shef.ac.uk/jobs">http://www.shef.ac.uk/jobs</a>, Search and apply for jobs, job reference number: <b><span></span>UOS005598</b><br>
<span>In addition to
submitting applications to the University of Sheffield, candidates should apply
via the website provided by project coordinator: <a href="http://clg.wlv.ac.uk/projects/EXPERT/">http://clg.wlv.ac.uk/projects/EXPERT/</a>. </span><br><br>For
informal enquiries about this job and department, contact: Dr Lucia Specia on
<a href="mailto:l.specia@sheffield.ac.uk">l.specia@sheffield.ac.uk</a></font></span>
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