22.3992, Jobs: NLG; Comp Semantics: Research Scientist, U of Colorado, Boulder

Wed Oct 12 19:54:52 UTC 2011

LINGUIST List: Vol-22-3992. Wed Oct 12 2011. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 22.3992, Jobs: NLG; Comp Semantics: Research Scientist, U of Colorado, Boulder

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1)
Date: 11-Oct-2011
From: Rodney Nielsen [Rodney.Nielsen at Colorado.edu]
Subject: Natural Language Generation; Computational Semantics: Research Scientist, University of Colorado, Boulder, USA

-------------------------Message 1 ---------------------------------- 
Date: Wed, 12 Oct 2011 15:53:56
From: Rodney Nielsen [Rodney.Nielsen at Colorado.edu]
Subject: Natural Language Generation; Computational Semantics: Research Scientist, University of Colorado, Boulder, USA

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University or Organization: University of Colorado, Boulder 
Department: Computational Language & Education Research Center
Job Location: Colorado, USA 
Web Address: http://clear.colorado.edu/
Job Rank: Research Scientist  

Specialty Areas: Computational Linguistics; Semantics; Natural Language Generation; Spoken Dialogue Systems

Description:

The Companionbots project at the Computational Language & Education 
Research center, University of Colorado, invites applications for two 
Research Scientists in Human-Robot Dialogue: one in Natural Language 
Generation (NLG), the other in Computational Semantics.

Project:
CU is leading an NSF-funded project, Companionbots for Proactive 
Therapeutic Dialog on Depression, to conduct research on a new class of 
dialog-based, home robotic healthcare assistants to facilitate in-home, real-
time care. The immediate project will result in enabling technology that 
integrates language, vision and emotive technology to proactively recognize 
situations and dialog with isolated elderly patients suffering from depression.

Object and human activity recognition will augment NLP to provide current 
and historical context important to dynamic dialog. An emotive, physical 
avatar will provide an interaction mechanism with sufficient trust to extract 
meaningful information that may not be observable in the immediate 
environment. The proactive generation of questions will be driven by a user 
model including context, goals, health, experiences, interests and prior 
interactions. 

Positions:
NLG: will span multiple genres from casual conversation to goal-directed 
mental health education and training, with an emphasis on question 
generation. It will explore multiple techniques from typical Spoken Dialogue 
Systems (SDS) to text-to-text NLG methods. 

Computational Semantics: will create a deep understanding and 
representation of a situation and spoken dialog based on past and immediate 
context. The semantics extracted will be used to construct a user model and 
predict future adverse events and situations. 

Both: You will be encouraged to develop independent research ideas within 
the scope of the project, will play an active role in a variety of project areas 
and will have the opportunity to apply your expertise to a critical, real-life 
problem in a multidisciplinary environment.

You will interact closely with the project's clinical experts in understanding 
subjects and developing healthcare-related dialogue strategies, with users to 
help guide and evaluate research & development, with Vision researchers to 
enhance contextual understanding, with Automatic Speech Recognition 
(ASR) experts to improve ASR with semantic context and with mechantronics 
researchers to ensure contextually appropriate emotive output. 

Qualifications:
-  Expertise in the area you are applying, preferably in the context of 
conversational SDSs
-  A PhD in computer science, computational linguistics, or a closely related 
discipline
-  Skills in the application of Machine Learning to computational linguistics 
tasks
-  Excellent software design and implementation skills
-  Good verbal communication and English writing skills
-  The ability to work both independently and in a multidisciplinary team
-  Working knowledge or publication record in usability, user modeling, 
discourse analysis and cognitive science related to SDS is a plus

To apply follow the instructions at these Jobs at CU links:
NLG - Job Posting Number 815056 
https://www.jobsatcu.com/applicants/jsp/shared/position/JobDetails_css.jsp?postingId=266674
Computational Semantics - Job Posting Number 815059 
https://www.jobsatcu.com/applicants/jsp/shared/position/JobDetails_css.jsp?postingId=266569

CU is an EOE committed to building a diverse workforce. We encourage 
applications from women, racial & ethnic minorities, individuals with 
disabilities & veterans Alternative formats of ad can be provided to 
individuals with disabilities by contacting the ADA Coordinator at (303) 492-1334.

CU conducts background checks on all final candidates.

Application Deadline:  (Open until filled)

Web Address for Applications: http://www.jobsatcu.com/ 
Contact Information:
	Rodney Nielsen 
	Email: Rodney.Nielsen at Colorado.edu 

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