3 April: fyi -- lectureships, UK
Index of April 2002 | Index of year: 2002 | Full index
FURTHER PARTICULARS
REFERENCE NUMBER
S35803/02
JOB TITLE
Lecturer or Senior Lecturer
in Computer Science, Software Engineering or
Artificial Intelligence
DEPARTMENT/SCHOOL
School of Computer Science
HOURS
Full time
STARTING SALARY
On Lecturer A or B scale: £20,470 - £32,537 per
annum,
or Senior Lecturer scale: £34,158 - £38,603 per
annum,
exact salary depending on experience and
qualifications
DURATION
Open
STARTING DATE
One post 1 September 2002, and other two 1
January 2003
INFORMAL ENQUIRIES
Prof Aaron Sloman
phone (+44) (0)121 414 3711
email: A.Sloman@cs.bham.ac.uk
CLOSING DATE FOR RECEIPT OF
APPLICATIONS
25 April 2002
Late applications may be considered
APPLICATION FORMS RETURNABLE
TO
The Director of Personnel Services
The University of Birmingham
Edgbaston
Birmingham, B15 2TT
England
RECRUITMENT OFFICE FAX
NUMBER
(+44) (0)121 414 4802
RECRUITMENT OFFICE TELEPHONE
NUMBER
(+44) (0)121 414 6486
RECRUITMENT OFFICE E-MAIL
ADDRESS
h.h.luong@bham.ac.uk
>
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
The University of Birmingham:
http://www.bham.ac.uk
School of Computer Science:
http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk
School's Research Information:
http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/research
INTRODUCTION
Applications are invited for open-ended appointments at the level of Lecturer
or Senior Lecturer, in Computer Science, Software Engineering or Artificial
Intelligence. One post is available to start from 1 September 2002 (or later),
the remaining two will be available from 1 January 2003 (or later) - exact
start dates are negotiable.
Applicants may be in any area of Computer Science, Software Engineering or
Artificial Intelligence. Applicants should have an internationally excellent
research background in one of these fields, as evidenced by publications in
leading international journals or conference proceedings. Applicants should
have teaching experience in one of the fields, and should have, or expect soon
to have, a PhD in one of the fields or an appropriate, closely related discipline.
Applicants for a Senior Lecturership should already meet our criteria for
promotion to that level. For these criteria, please contact Mr David King, tel:
(+44)(0)121 414 3711; email: D.J.King@cs.bham.ac.uk.
An appointee who has not previously passed a probationary period for a
university lecturer will be put on probation for three years. This is normal
practice in UK universities. The probationary period may be reduced to take
account of relevant previous experience.
An appointee will be expected to contribute strongly to the research life of the
School.
An appointee must have the commitment to achieve excellence in teaching,
from the undergraduate level up to research student supervision. Teaching
assignments may be in areas outside the appointee's research areas. A
reduced amount of teaching will be arranged in the appointee's first year.
An appointee will be expected to help with administration. However, if the
appointee is on probation, a reduced amount of administration will be
arranged throughout the probationary period.
The School also encourages industrial collaboration and consultancy.
TEACHING/RESEARCH AREAS OF THE SCHOOL
The following paragraphs comment on various specific areas in which the
School is already strong. However, they are not intended to restrict the
interests or ambitions of applicants. The areas are listed in alphabetical order.
The names listed are of the relevant lecturers, professors, etc.
Advanced Interaction Technology & Software Systems
[Tom Axford, Bob Hendley, Alan Sexton]
Research in this area has included work on interactive systems, agent-based
interaction, multi-agent assistants, complex visualization technologies,
knowledge discovery, databases, and principles and theories of interactive
system design. We have done leading work in information retrieval, especially
with the web. The group interacts with other areas in the School, and has in
particular applied a variety of AI techniques. It has also interacted with
industry, which provides real-world issues to test theories and designs. It
would be advantageous to develop the group's work further and obtain
additional teaching and research strength in software engineering, virtual
reality, databases, etc.
Agents
[John Barnden, Georgios Theodoropoulos, Aaron Sloman]
The School has investigated architectures of single intelligent agents, the role
of emotion in agents, and the commonsense belief reasoning needed for
communities of intelligent agents. However, we would value building upon
this work with a greater intensity of research on large sets of simulated
intelligent agents. Appropriate foci include sophisticated, uncertain reasoning
by agents about each other, and flexible and expressive interaction languages
between agents. A recent development is work on synthetic agents for
computer entertainments.
Cognitive Science and Artificial Intelligence
[for personnel please see other subsections]
The Artificial Intelligence side of the School (represented in various
subsections above and below) has a strong Cognitive Science orientation and
tradition, and applicants with such an orientation are welcomed. In this
regard, particularly appropriate areas of cognitive science include (but are not
limited to) language, reasoning, theory of mind, vision, and biological neural
networks.
Commonsense Reasoning
[John Barnden, Antoni Diller, Manfred Kerber, Mark Lee, Donald Peterson,
Mark Ryan]
The School has strengths in commonsense reasoning, default reasoning,
belief revision, automated theorem proving and proof planning. Partly because
of our work on natural language pragmatics, notably on metaphor and
commonsense reasoning about beliefs, we would welcome expanding and
intensifying our activities on commonsense reasoning in general. We are
interested in a variety of approaches: e.g., rule-based, case-based,
connectionist.
Computational Linguistics
[John Barnden, Peter Coxhead, William Edmondson, Peter Hancox, Mark
Lee]
The School has engaged in research on various aspects of computational
linguistics, including speech, syntax, story processing and machine
translation, and has particular strengths in natural language pragmatics,
specifically in work on non-literal language and belief reasoning. We would
welcome expanding our involvement in computational linguistics, capitalizing
on the recent addition of research personnel in the area. We welcome
applicants interested in either the more traditional approaches or in
connectionist, statistical or corpus-based approaches.
The School's computational linguistics work has actual and potential links
with research elsewhere in the University, particularly with the Corpus
Linguistics Group (well-known for the COBUILD Bank of English corpus)
within the School of English, the School of Education, and the Education
Technology Research Group in the School of Engineering.
Computer Vision
[Ke Chen, Ela Claridge, Aaron Sloman]
Research in this area is interdisciplinary, ranging from interpretation of colour
images based on physics of image formation, to modelling of human visual
perception. Much work at present is in the area of medical image
interpretation. We would welcome expanding the research and teaching into
more general computer vision. This would buttress the School's work in
robotics and artificial intelligence, and could further connect with the
extensive work on vision and action within the School of Psychology. Our
School is also interested in vision-related areas such as diagrammatic
reasoning and data visualization.
Mathematical Foundations of Computer Science
[Martin Escardo, Achim Jung, Eike Ritter]
Work in this group concentrates on topological, categorical, order-theoretic,
and logical foundations for models of computation. Subjects of recent interest
include semantics of proof search, models for (higher-order) intuitionistic
linear logic, real-number computation and domain theory in logical form.
The group keeps strong links to the Verification, Logic in AI, and
Programming Languages research groups in the School, and is involved in
several national and international collaborations.
Modelling, Analysis and Verification of Systems
[Mark Ryan, Marta Kwiatkowska, Georgios Theodoropoulos]
The activities of the group are centered on developing languages and
formalisms for the modelling of complex systems, for example telephone
networks, distributed systems and asynchronous hardware, as well as
methods and software tools for their analysis. The activity of formal
verification via model checking, particularly concerning automatic verification
of probabilistic and real-time systems and the applications of model checking
tools to industrially relevant problems, is well established. The work being
carried out includes theoretical foundations, modal and temporal logics,
development of efficient algorithms and data structures, tool development and
model checking case studies. The activity on distributed simulation focuses
on protocols for synchronization, interest management and load balancing.
Natural Computation (Evolutionary, Neurally-Inspired, etc.)
[John Bullinaria, Ke Chen, Aniko Ekart, Julian Miller, Jon Rowe, Aaron
Sloman, Xin Yao]
The School has a reputation as a major centre for research in Evolutionary
Computing, including learning, optimization and design. Existing research in
this field ranges from genetic programming to evolutionary design, from
co-evolution to evolutionary neural networks, from collective intelligence to
automatic modularization of learning systems, and from unconstrained to
constrained optimization.
In the neural networks area, existing research topics include intelligent web
technology, neural network ensemble learning, and combination of multiple
learning systems.
Our strength and ambitions in the Natural Computation area have been
recognized by EPSRC funding for our MSc in Natural Computation, which
has just started.
Programming Languages
[Uday Reddy, Eike Ritter, Hayo Thielecke]
The Programming Languages group addresses the issues of semantics and
formal methods for programming languages. Of special interest are
object-oriented programming languages and languages with computational
effects such as Standard ML. The group's recent work includes the
development of a model object-oriented programming language and its
programming logic, categorical models for relational parametricity, semantics
of refinement calculi, comparative analysis of control operations like
continuations and exceptions, and the application of Linear Logic and the
Logic of Bunched Implications for reasoning about programs. The group has
strong research links to other groups in the School.
Robotics
[Jeremy Wyatt]
Intelligent robotics is a new area of research for the School. Research has so
far focused on adaptive methods for robot control, including reinforcement
learning, model based learning, evolutionary approaches, neural network
ensembles, hidden Markov modelling, and navigation. We occupy a spacious
and well equipped laboratory in the school with access to Pioneer and
Khephera robot platforms, a robot arm, and twenty robot kits for teaching and
simple research projects. A further 4 individuals are collaborating with Jeremy
Wyatt in this area. We would welcome applicants in any area of intelligent
robotics, although we particularly keen to strengthen our hand in either
learning or vision.
More detailed information on the School's research and staff can be found
at http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/research and http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/people.
The list of topics presented above gives a brief indication of the current range
of research activities. We are prepared to consider applicants whose expertise
would extend our range of teaching and research topics, as part of the
process of growth that is expected to continue for several more years.
TEACHING
The School offers an integrated set of BSc and BEng/MEng degree
programmes at the undergraduate and postgraduate levels.
All our undergraduate degree courses have a strong practical element with
software workshops in the first two years and a major project in the final year.
All degrees allow students to take a year out for study in Continental Europe
or to work in industry. Students also have the opportunity to combine the
BEng/MEng with Business Studies.
In recent years the School has developed an undergraduate half-degree
programme in Artificial Intelligence. This is an important component of the
interdisciplinary character of the School's research. The AI half degree is
currently available in combination with half degrees in Psychology,
Mathematics, Computer Science, and Philosophy and other Arts subjects. In
a recent curricular development, most non-AI students will now have to take
an introduction to AI.
The School runs a Computer Science half-degree, which is available in
combination with Mathematics and Arts subjects. There is a BEng/MEng in
Computer Science and Civil Engineering and a BEng/MEng in Electronic and
Software Engineering.
At the MSc level, we offer a postgraduate conversion course which is
burgeoning in size, a highly selective MSc in Advanced Computer Science,
which is available mainly for computer science graduates aiming to do
research, and our newly-established, EPSRC-supported MSc in Natural
Computation.
Research training towards MPhil or PhD degrees is offered in all the main
research areas. The School makes available a number of studentships for
outstanding PhD students, in addition to externally funded studentships.
Further information can be found via the School's online course descriptions:
http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/study.
THE SCHOOL
Since the early 1990s the School has been transformed by a succession of new
appointments, including several new chairs. It is now a world class centre for
research and research-led teaching. This has been recognized by the
University in several ways, including provision of a new state of the art
building, opened in October 2001 on the prestigious West Campus
Development, as described here: http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/news
Several research areas have seen substantial growth, including Theoretical
Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence and Evolutionary Computation. The
School has also maintained its previous commitment to research and teaching
in application areas. There is considerable interaction between people working
in different areas in the School, and several people work in two or more areas.
The School has a policy of resisting fragmentation into isolated subgroups,
and has maintained a friendly collaborative atmosphere, with a highly
consultative management style.
The School has developed a strong research culture and there are generally
four or so research seminars each week, with a good balance between visiting
and internal speakers and between formality and informality. Members of the
School have received research grants from the EPSRC, the European Union,
NATO, the Leverhulme Trust, the British Council and other funding bodies,
as well as by industrial concerns such as BT Marconi, Sharp, and Sony. The
School has also been active in the organization of workshops and conferences.
For instance, it hosted AISB 2000 (Artificial Intelligence and Simulation of
Behaviour), ESSLLI 2000 (European Summer School on Logic, Language
and Information) and MIUA 2001 (Medical Image Understanding and
Analysis).
The School collaborates on research with several other departments in the
University. Collaborative research has also been performed with other
universities and with industrial enterprises and local government, both within
the UK and elsewhere in the EU. We have collaborative links in several other
parts of the world including the USA, New Zealand, Brazil, continental
Europe, Australia, and the Far East.
A significant proportion of the School's budget is earmarked for research
support, including provision of up to date computing facilities, a departmental
library to complement the main university library, funding for travel to
conferences, regular visiting seminar speakers, PhD studentships and
teaching assistantships.
To ensure maximal operational efficiency and devolution of tasks to
appropriate personnel, the School has an Academic Manager in charge of
curricular administration, a School Manager who has many high-level
administrative duties, and an External Relations Officer who helps with
industrial collaboration.
The School has a highly consultative, flexible, non-divisive and open way of
operating in its research, teaching and administrative activities.
The School is viewed by the University's central administration as having a
pivotal role to play in the future development of the University.
Interdisciplinary research is strongly encouraged both by the School and by
the University.
THE CENTRE OF EXCELLENCE IN ADVANCED TELEMATICS
The Center, described at http://www.advanced-telematics.com, is a bridge
between research and the local business community. Partly funded by the
European Regional Development Fund, the Centre aims to improve the
competitiveness of medium and small sized enterprises by encouraging the
take-up of information and communication technologies and the application
of skills and research developed within the School.
The Centre provides the opportunity for School members to undertake applied
research at various levels and is developing industrial interest in research
funding and a number of collaborative projects between academic staff and
industry.
THE UNIVERSITY AND CITY
The University of Birmingham is a major civic university founded in 1900. It
has roughly 20,500 students of whom 3,300 are international students and
nearly 6,000 are postgraduates. It has both a strong research reputation and
an assured continuing position as a leading British university. It is one of the
most comprehensive universities in the UK in terms of disciplines covered.
It is located on a pleasant leafy and spacious campus, three miles south of the
recently re-developed City Centre, and yet is only a short drive away from
beautiful countryside. The campus is close to popular, attractive residential
areas, and has a small railway station adjacent to it, connecting to the city
centre and to towns south of Birmingham.
The city boasts excellent programmes of classical music, ballet and theatre.
Also, Stratford-upon-Avon with its world-renowned theatrical productions
is only a 40-minute drive from the campus. The city has an international
airport, and is well served by road and rail links.
The university's Central Information Service manages a website
(http://www.bham.ac.uk) providing information about the university and the
city.
HOW TO APPLY
PLEASE DO NOT APPLY TO THE SCHOOL DIRECT.
Application forms are available from the Personnel Services address below.
Email applications are acceptable, though short listed applicants will be
required to fill in the standard form. An online copy of the standard
application form is available in various formats at
http://www.bham.ac.uk/staffing/app.htm.
Applicants should state clearly on the application form whether they are
interested in a Lectureship or a Senior Lectureship.
The information provided by applicants should include the following:
(a) a full curriculum vitae, including research and teaching experience
(b) an outline of future research plans, and possible contribution to this
School,
(c) a list of publications (see below)
(d) contact addresses for the applicant, including home and office telephone
numbers and email address
(e) the names and addresses of at least three referees (including telephone
numbers and email addresses).
In order to assist the selectors, applicants are requested, if possible, to list
publications under the following main headings:
1. Authored books
2. Edited books
3. Refereed Journal papers
4. Contributions to edited works
5. Review articles
6. Conference proceedings - refereed (not abstracts)
7. Conference proceedings - not refereed (not abstracts)
8. Others (e.g. publicly available software produced).
Please list abstracts separately at the end if appropriate. Where papers are
jointly authored it would be helpful to have an indication of the applicant's
contribution, e.g. by specifying a percentage.
The closing date for applications is 25 April 2002 (late applications may be
considered).
Applications should be sent to:
Director of Personnel Services
The University of Birmingham
Edgbaston
Birmingham, B15 2TT
England
Applying by Email:
If submitting an application by email please address it to
h.h.luong@bham.ac.uk
If you wish your application to be acknowledged please include a stamped
addressed postcard. Applicants who have not heard from us after eight weeks
of the closing date can assume that they have not been short-listed.
If you wish, you may send one or at most two recent research papers in
support of your application. Please do not send these to Staffing Services but
instead directly to:
David King, School Manager
School of Computer Science
The University of Birmingham
Edgbaston
Birmingham, B15 2TT
England
D.J.King@cs.bham.ac.uk
(+44) (0)121 414 3711
Index of April 2002 | Index of year: 2002 | Full index