36.2120, Support: English, French; Computational Linguistics, Translation: PhD, Institute for Language and Communication, UCLouvain
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LINGUIST List: Vol-36-2120. Thu Jul 10 2025. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.
Subject: 36.2120, Support: English, French; Computational Linguistics, Translation: PhD, Institute for Language and Communication, UCLouvain
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Date: 07-Jul-2025
From: Leonardo Zilio [leonardo.zilio at uclouvain.be]
Subject: English, French; Computational Linguistics, Translation: PhD, Institute for Language and Communication, UCLouvain
Institution/Organization: Institute for Language and Communication,
UCLouvain
Level: PhD
Duties: Research
Specialty Areas: Computational Linguistics; Translation
Required Language(s): English (eng)
French (fra)
Description:
PhD position in NLP / Terminology at the Institute for Language and
Communication, UCLouvain
UCLouvain is looking for a doctoral researcher (F/M/X) for a project
that involves natural language processing (NLP) and automatic term
extraction (ATE).
- Full-time doctoral fellowship (100%) for two years, with conditional
renewal for another two years
- Institute for Language & Communication (ILC) at UCLouvain
(Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium)
- Start date: after 1st October 2025 (the start date is flexible)
Short Project Description:
Specialised bilingual glossaries are vital resources for the
translation industry. Their development is, however, very
time-consuming, and bilingual parallel corpora that can serve as basis
for their creation are scarce, depending on the language pair and the
specialised domain. This project thus focuses on developing a new
methodology, based on existing machine learning and deep learning
techniques, for automatically extracting bilingual terminology using
comparable corpora. By combining language models fine-tuned for token
classification and cross-lingual sentence similarity, this project
proposes a cost-effective way of automatically building specialised
bilingual glossaries on demand.
To achieve that, the PhD project consists of two main goals:
1. Create a bilingual comparable corpus in French and English,
focusing on the general domain of international patents, which has to
be semi-automatically annotated with terms and bilingual terminology
alignments. The specific domain of the corpus will be defined by the
doctoral researcher.
2. Create a new methodology for automatic terminology extraction (ATE)
using deep learning and fine-tuning of existing language models. This
objective is divided in three main parts:
a. Testing the existing methodologies for ATE;
b. Analyzing positive and negative aspects of the existing
methodologies; and
c. Developing a new methodology for ATE that can be adapted to other
languages.
The doctoral researcher is expected to conduct the essential points of
the research to attain the above-mentioned goals. They should also
ensure the visibility of the results by publishing the work in
academic venues and write a doctoral thesis.
Work Environment:
The Institute for Language & Communication
(https://www.uclouvain.be/en/research-institutes/ilc) is part of
UCLouvain (https://www.uclouvain.be/en/the-university), a lively
university with its main campus in Louvain-la-Neuve, a city with a
very dynamic, pedestrian-only urban centre that offers good quality of
life and is very close to Brussels (around 30km).
The research project will be conducted under the supervision of
Leonardo Zilio, whose specialty lies in the study of specialized
language and terminology extraction.
Requirements:
Research Field: Language sciences
Education Level: Master Degree or equivalent
Skills/Qualifications:
The applicant should have the following qualifications and skills:
- A master’s degree in computational linguistics, natural language
processing, computer science (with emphasis in artificial
intelligence), digital humanities, or a related domain.
- An excellent academic curriculum.
- Good knowledge of French (at least B2 level) and English (at least
B2 level)
- Good computational and programming skills:
Programming language: Python
Knowledge of scikit-learn, pandas, tensorflow/keras and/or pytorch.
- Good knowledge of the main NLP tools. Knowledge of deep neural
networks and token-classification models is a plus.
- Knowledge of lexical sciences, specially terminology.
- Autonomy, curiosity, collaborative sense, good attention and
analytical skills, proactivity and reactivity.
Application Documents:
Application deadline: 17 August 2025
If you are interested in this doctoral fellowship, please send your
application per e-mail to Leonardo Zilio (leonardo.zilio at uclouvain.be)
and attach all the requested documents below. These are the requested
documents:
1. A detailed curriculum vitae in English, showing the required
qualifications and skills, the academic record (with courses and final
marks), as well as existing publications (if any), work experience (if
any) and other academic and scientific experience;
2. A motivation letter, in French, describing why the applicant is
interested on this doctoral fellowship and how their profile aligns
with the project description and its objectives (max. 2 pages);
3. A reference letter in English or French from a previous lecturer /
supervisor.
4. An concise academic statement in English, indicating the
expectations of the applicant in relation to their doctoral studies
and their career objectives.
The pre-selected applicants will be invited to attend an online
interview. Details for the interview will be sent to those applicants
per e-mail.
More Information:
Questions regarding the fellowship and the application procedure can
be sent per e-mail to Leonardo Zilio (leonardo.zilio at uclouvain.be)
before the 25th of July 2025.
Where to apply:
E-mail: leonardo.zilio at uclouvain.be
Website: https://jobs.uclouvain.be/Personnelscientifique/?locale=en_GB
Engagement Conditions:
The offer of this doctoral fellowship is subject to the following
conditions:
- After the recruitment, the selected applicant should also be
approved by the UCLouvain’s Research Counsel
- The doctoral researcher should live in Belgium for the whole
duration of the fellowship.
- The net monthly amount that can be expected by the doctoral
researcher is around 2,450 euros.
- The initial contract is for two years. To ensure the renewal of the
fellowship, the doctoral research will have to successfully pass the
mid-term evaluation of the doctoral thesis and also apply for FNRS
funding and attain a classification at rank “A”.
- The maximum period indicated above is increased by one year in case
of paternal or maternal leave.
Email Address for Applications: leonardo.zilio at uclouvain.be
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