PhD project positions within the EU Initial Training Network „RobotDoc“ in the area of Social Learning and Interaction

[Katharina Rohlfing]

Dear colleagues,
I would like to inform you about the following job offer:

The Applied Informatics Group, Faculty of Technology, Bielefeld
University is looking for PhD candidates for project positions within
the EU Initial Training Network „RobotDoc“ in the area of Social
Learning and Interaction. We are looking for two PhD candidates for
the following projects:

- Development of dialogical rules.

- History of social interaction: Emergence of top-down strategies from
bottom-up social attentional processes.

Please see below for more details.

Best regards,

	Katharina Rohlfing.

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PD Dr. Katharina J. Rohlfing

Emergentist Semantics Group
Center of Excellence Cognitive Interaction Technology
Bielefeld University

http://www.cit-ec.de/emergentistsemantics/index.html

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Job Offers

The Applied Informatics Group, Faculty of Technology, Bielefeld
University is looking for PhD candidates for project positions within
the EU Initial Training Network „RobotDoc“ in the area of Social
Learning and Interaction. We are looking for two PhD candidates for
the following projects:

•	Development of dialogical rules. The verbal and cognitive
development of infants is rooted in dialogue with other people (e.g.
parents, peers). However, there is little research on how infants
develop the capability for dialogue. We hypothesize that contingency
is a fundamental mechanism that may help infants to develop their
basic interactive capabilities such as turn-taking (Masataka 2003).
These capabilities guide their attention to opening phases of a
dialogue, and even regulate their emotions. This project proposes to
use the mechanism of contingency to build a system that can learn
dialogical rules through interaction by analyzing the effects of its
own dialogue contributions.

•	History of social interaction: Emergence of top-down strategies from
bottom-up social attentional processes. The development of top-down
preferences for social cues helps infants to establish an enduring
focus on, and give high priority to, the relevant information through
its integration with saliency-based bottom-up processes (Golinkoff &
Hirsh-Pasek, in press). Here we aim at investigating how such top-down
strategies can be derived from basic mechanisms and how they require
and advance system memory and learning capabilities. Integrating such
a capability on a robot would enable the study of the influence of the
environment and the history of social interaction on the emerging top-
down processes, and allow the robot to gradually develop more focused
top-down attentive behaviours shaped by joint social and bottom-up
cues.

We invite applications from motivated young scientists with a
background in computer science, linguistics, psychology, robotics,
mathematics, cognitive science or similar areas, that are willing to
contribute to the cross-disciplinary research agenda of our research
group. Research and development are directed towards understanding the
processes and functional constituents of cognitive interaction, and
establishing cognitive interfaces and robots that facilitate the use
of complex technical systems. Bielefeld University provides a unique
environment for research in cognitive and intelligent systems by
bringing together researchers from all over the world in a variety of
relevant disciplines under the roof of central institutions such as
the Excellence Center of Cognitive Interaction Technology (CITEC) or
the Research Institute for Cognition and Robotics (CoR-Lab).

Successful candidates should hold an academic degree (MSc/Diploma) in
a related discipline and have a strong interest in research and social
robotics.

All applications should include: a short cover letter indicating the
motivation and research interests of the candidate, a CV including a
list of publications, and relevant certificates of academic
qualification.

Bielefeld University is an equal opportunity employer. Women are
especially encouraged to apply and in the case of comparable
competences and qualification, will be given preference. Bielefeld
University explicitly encourages disabled people to apply. Bielefeld
University offers a family friendly environment and special
arrangements for child care and double carrier opportunities.

Please send your application with reference to one of the two offered
positions no later than 30.9.2009 to Ms Susanne Höke
(shoeke at techfak.uni-bielefeld.de).

Contact:
Susanne Höke
AG Applied Informatics
Faculty of Technology
Universitätsstr. 21-23
33615 Bielefeld
Germany
Email: shoeke at techfak.uni-bielefeld.de
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