[Corpora-List] Postdoc Position in Language Technologies

Fri Oct 28 10:08:27 UTC 2011

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Postdoc Position in Language Technologies

The SINAI research group, Computer Science Department,  University of Jaén (Spain) offers one PhD position in the FIRST project (A Flexible Interactive Reading Support Tool) funded by the EU-FP7. The main objective of the FIRST project is to implement, deploy, and evaluate technology to support the authoring of accessible content in Bulgarian, English, and Spanish for users with autistic spectrum disorders (ASD) with a view to widening inclusion and empowerment in Europe.

Recent developments in Language Technology (LT) have enabled the processing of natural languages. These technologies can analyse language structures and their meanings, and also generate useful/meaningful text. These advances have brought many benefits to the EU, of which machine translation is an example. Nevertheless, very little effort has been made to apply these technologies for the benefit of people with ASD. We aim to improve this situation, and to develop and deploy LT to address, and thus alleviate the aforementioned language deficits of people with ASD. More specifically, LT will be used to reduce and/or remove structural complexity and ambiguity in meaning in texts. Additional content, such as illustrative pictures, concise summaries of documents, pre-reading questions on related concepts, and document navigation tools, which are shown to have a role to play in improving the comprehensibility of written documents can also be generated. At present, LT are mature enough to provide a sound basis for the development of such components (to automatically detect and remove obstacles to reading comprehension and to generate additional content to facilitate reading comprehension). This, in turn, will improve the ability to access to written information by people with ASD, thereby reducing their risk of exclusion.

The role will require the post holder to undertake research and software development and to work with the doctoral students. This is an opportunity to work in a well-connected international team with world-leading reputations in Natural Language Processing (NLP). The Postdoc will collaborate with team members in the development of new tools and in presentations and publications about the project. The ability to write up research findings for submission to peer-reviewed conference and journals as well interpersonal and communication skills to present findings locally and at conferences are desirable.

Position requirements:

* PhD in Computational Linguistics or a closely related field

* International track record, evidenced by peer-reviewed publications

* Excellent programming skills (C, Java, Phyton...) and experience in NLP

* Able to work as member of a closely collaborating team

* Willing to reach out to and collaborate with national and international colleagues in related research disciplines

Appointment and Salary:

The position is available for an initial period of 6 months with possible extension to 2 more years. Depending on training and work experience, the maximum monthly salary will be € 3.000.

To apply, please email maite at ujaen.es a cover letter with your motivation and your curriculum vitae.

Closing date for applications: 15th November 2011

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