[Corpora-List] Two job offers in NLP (UCL - CENTAL, Belgium)

[Cédrick Fairon]

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UCL: Two Job offers in Natural Language Processing
(Natural Language Generation & Speech Synthesis)

Centre for Natural Language Processing - CENTAL
http://cental.fltr.ucl.ac.be
Université catholique de Louvain - UCL
Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium

CENTAL is recruiting:
1 Post-doc & 1 young researcher
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EXPRESSIVE is a collaborative project between the Université  
catholique de Louvain (UCL, Belgium), the Polytechnic University of  
Mons (FPMS, Belgium)  and four industrial partners (Alcatel,  
ITOptics, Acapela Group, Belga). The objective is to investigate the  
possibility of improving a Speech Synthesis System for French by  
adding  expressiveness to a synthetic voice  (Expressive Speech  
Synthesis). The system will combine a Natural Language Generation  
(NLG) system tailored for the task and a speech synthesis engine  
capable of interpreting "expressiveness instructions" provided by the  
NLG system and based on a linguistic model. Each team will be  
involved in a complementary part of the project: the VALIBEL team  
(UCL) will investigate prosody/phonology issues, the CENTAL team will  
develop the NLG system and the TCTS team (FMPS) will work on the  
voice engine. The industrial partners will be involved in the design  
of the overall architecture and the conception of industrial  
applications based on the results of the research.  This applied  
research project is funded by the Government of the Walloon Region  
(DGTRE).

To strengthen the CENTAL research team (UCL) and collaborate on the  
EXPRESSIVE project, we are recruiting two researchers.

1) One post-doc (up to 24 months). The ideal candidate:
* has a PhD in Computational linguistics, Linguistics or Computer  
science (or another close and relevant discipline);
* has good programming skills;
* is interested in Natural Language Generation and has a tangible  
experience or knowledge of the field;
* speaks French;
* is a hard worker... has good team spirit!

2) One young researcher (up to 24 months). The ideal candidate:
* has a Master in Computational linguistics, Linguistics or Computer  
science (or another close and relevant discipline);
* has good programming skills;
* is interested in Natural Language Generation and wants to acquire  
new experience or build up his own experience of the field;
* speaks French;
* is a hard worker... has good team spirit!

Both researchers will be mainly involved in research and development  
for the conception and construction of the NLG system. They will work  
at the University of Louvain, in Louvain-la-Neuve, a nice modern  
city, located 30 kilometers away from Brussels. He/she will be part  
of the CENTAL team, a dynamic research team of 12 people, involved in  
various regional, national and international research projects in  
Natural Language Processing. He/she will benefit from the lab  
infrastructure and from a stimulating environment. He/she will work  
and stay in close contact with other researchers and professors of  
the lab as well as with the other organisations involved in the project.

Duration of the contract: up to 24 months
Starting date: Sept./Oct. 2007 (with some flexibility)

Additional information:
UCL: http://www.uclouvain.be
Cental: http://cental.fltr.ucl.ac.be
Valibel: http://valibel.fltr.ucl.ac.be
TCTS: http://tcts.fpms.ac.be/

Interested candidates are invited to send their C.V. and a statement  
of research interests to the address below.  Applications received by  
August 31, 2007 will receive fullest consideration; however, the  
search continues until the positions have been filled.

For additional information about the position please contact:
Prof. Cédrick Fairon
Director of CENTAL
Faculté de philosophie et lettres
Université catholique de Louvain
Place Blaise Pascal, 1
1348 Louvain-la-Neuve
Belgium
fairon at tedm.ucl.ac.be
Tel.: +32 10 47 37 88
Fax : +32 10 47 26 06