17 July: fyi -- several NLP jobs, UK

Index of July 2002 | Index of year: 2002 | Full index

THE UNIVERSITY OF
SHEFFIELD

Department of
Computer Science

RESEARCH OPPORTUNITIES in LANGUAGE PROCESSING

Seven researchers are required to work on four projects within the
Natural Language Processing Group at the Sheffield University Department
of Computer Science. These positions include opportunities for
candidates who both do and do not have a specific language processing
background.

The Department of Computer Science at Sheffield University is a leading
European centre for research in the area of Computational Linguistics
and Language Engineering. The Natural Language Processing Group
(http://nlp.shef.ac.uk/) was founded nine years ago under the leadership
of Professor Yorick Wilks, and now has over thirty members (including
faculty, researcher staff, postgraduate students, and administrative and
technical support staff). The group has special expertise in a range of
areas, including information extraction, software architectures for
natural language processing, dialogue and conversational systems, and
lexicons and ontologies.

Membership of such a large and well-funded research group brings many
advantages. The group provides an excellent research environment, with
the benefits of shared expertise, opportunities for intellectual
exchange and collaboration, and a good computing, research and
administrative infrastructure. In addition, the group's success in
winning research funding provides the potential for longer-term
employment, through researchers being hired onto further grants.

A brief sketch of the projects and positions follows.

Project 1 - CLEF

The Clinical E-Science Framework (CLEF) project seeks to advance the
handling of healthcare information about cancer patients to better
support both clinical care and research. Funded by the UK Medical
Research Council, this three year project starts in October 2002, and
includes both partners having a focus on technological issues (the
universities of Manchester, Sheffield and Brighton) and on clinical
issues (UCL/CHIME, the Royal Marsden NHS Trust, the Judge Institute of
Management at Cambridge).
Lead investigators: Robert Gaizauskas, Mark Hepple.

Position 1 (Ref Number PR560)
A person with experience in language processing, preferably with a PhD
in Computer Science or a related area. Background in either information
extraction or computational terminology will be an advantage. Role:
evelopment/adaptation of language technology for information extraction
from clinical report texts.

Position 2 (Ref Number PR561)
This researcher will contribute to the analysis of the work of clinical
data managers and the purposes that information extracted from clinical
reports can serve, and will contribute to the design (and possibly
implementation of) the language processing system interface. Knowledge
of the following areas will be an advantage: human-centred issues in
information systems design, clinical domains and clinical language,
software technology for interface construction.

Project 2 - CUB REPORTER

This project aims to advance the state of the art of several language
processing technologies (information extraction, question answering,
multidocument summarisation) through the development of a system to find
and collate relevant background information from archival sources for
use by a journalist in the context of a "breaking" news story. Funded by
the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), this
three year project is a collaboration between the departments of
Computer Science and Journalism at Sheffield University and the Press
Association, the major UK domestic newswire service. Its start-date, yet
to be fixed, will be sometime late 2002 or early 2003.
Lead investigator: Robert Gaizauskas.

Position 1 (Ref Number PR562)
A person with experience in language processing, preferably with a PhD
in Computer Science or a related area. Background in either information
extraction, question answering, or summarisation will be an advantage.
Role: development and integration of novel language technologies for
information extraction, question answering and multidocument
summarisation over newswire texts.

Position 2 (Ref Number PR563)
This researcher will contribute to the analysis of the work of
journalists and how they synthesise background information when writing,
and will contribute to the design (and possibly implementation of) the
language processing system interface. Knowledge of the following areas
will be an advantage: human-centred issues in information systems
design, software technology for interface construction, corpus
construction and text analysis.

Project 3 - DOT.KOM

This research project aims to design and implement innovative
methodologies and services for the Semantic Web, based on adaptive
information extraction (IE) from web documents. Dot.kom is funded by the
European Commission and will last 30 months, starting from October 2002.
Partners are: the University of Sheffield (main contractor), the Open
University (UK), the University of Karlsruhe (D), ITC-Irst (I), Quinary
(I) and Ontoprise (D) plus a number of user companies organised in a
user group.
Lead investigator: Fabio Ciravegna.

Position 1 (Ref Number PR564)
A person with experience in language processing (possibly IE) or machine
learning, preferably with a PhD in Computer Science or related area.
Role: high-level research and application development for adaptive IE
for the Semantic Web.

Position 2 (Ref Number PR565)
A person with a degree in Computer Science or related area with
excellent programming skills, preferably in Java. Experience in language
processing and/or machine learning are a plus. Role: research and
development for services for the Semantic Web based on IE; system
integration.

For both positions, knowledge of Italian and/or German are a plus.

Project 4 - FASiL

The FASiL project seeks to advance the processing of spoken dialogue,
through the development of a spoken language system that embodies
conversational and multi-modal interaction via a mobile device. Partners
in this European Commission funded project include Vox Generation and
Speechworks. The project will last two years, starting around October
2002.
Lead Investigator: Yorick Wilks

Position (Ref Number PR566)
An experienced researcher, preferably with a PhD, who has an interest
in/experience of some of the following topics: machine learning,
dialogue processing and grammar induction.

For all posts

Salaries: within range of Ł17, 626 to Ł36, 491, depending on
qualifications and experience.
Terms & Conditions: Research Staff
Length of contract: See individual projects above (ranging from 2 to
3 years).
Start Date: 1 October 2002 (or as soon as possible thereafter
depending on project)
Closing date: 7 August 2002, although applications received after
this date will be considered until the posts are filled.

All positions are subject to final confirmation of project contracts.

Informal enquiries for all posts:
Ms Linda Perna
Research Coordinator
Tel: +44 (0)114 222 1815
Email: l.perna@dcs.shef.ac.uk

How to apply

To apply for a one of the above vacancies first obtain an Application
Pack from Personnel Services via one of the following methods:

online: - see
http://www.shef.ac.uk/jobs/how_to_apply.php
by phone: - call the 24 hour telephone answering
service:- +44 (0)114 222 1631.
by post: - write to Personnel Services, Firth
Court, Western Bank, Sheffield, S10 2TN, United Kingdom.
by fax: - +44 (0)114 222 1624.
collect in person: - Personnel Services reception, 10 - 12
Brunswick Street, Sheffield, S10 2FN.

Please ensure that you include the reference number of the post and your
full postal address when requesting details, otherwise you will incur
added delay in the information being sent out to you.

Requests for packs to be posted will normally be mailed out on the
working day following that on which the request is received.

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