12 September: fyi -- phd funding, NL
Index of September 2003 | Index of year: 2003 | Full index
*** Ph.D. vacancy at the University of Twente ***
The Language, Knowledge and Interaction (TKI) research group of the
University of Twente (http://parlevink.cs.utwente.nl/) is a
multidisciplinary group of about 35 enthusiastic researchers in the
fields of multimodal human-computer interaction, language and speech
technology, virtual reality and agent technology. These fields are
also addressed in the Human Media interaction (HMI) Master's course
for which the group is responsible. The group is currently looking for a
Ph.D. student, fulltime, (4 years)
for the project "Interactive Multimodal Output Generation" (IMOGEN)
Application deadline: October 3, 2003
Job opening URL: http://www.cs.utwente.nl/~theune/vacancy/
IMOGEN project description
The Interactive Multimodal Output Generation (IMOGEN) project aims at
the development and implementation of efficient new models for the
generation of multimodal output combining language, speech and
graphics.A module will be developed for information presentation in a
multimodal question-answering system, where the information to be
presented is (partially) provided by a QA-component as the result of a
user's query.
The four focus points of IMOGEN are (1) multimodality, (2) improved
prosody, (3) adaptivity and (4) evaluation. Multimodality implies
deciding which (combination of) modalities should be used for which
kind of information and how generated text and speech depend on the
visual modality. Prosody improvement requires determining which
prosodic realizations are best for speech synthesis in a multimodal
setting. For adaptivity, the main question is how to generate output
which is tailored to the current interaction. Finally, evaluation is
needed to obtain insight in how people interpret and appraise various
forms of multimodal information presentation.
The IMOGEN project is a cooperation between the universities of
Tilburg and Twente. It consists of three closely related subprojects.
The first subproject is carried out at the University of Twente (TKI
research group) and aims at the development of an adaptive multimodal
generation module. The second and third subprojects are carried out at
Tilburg University, and focus on prosody and evaluation respectively.
During the course of the project, there will be regular meetings
alternating between Tilburg and Twente. Project supervisors are Mariet
Theune (Twente) and Emiel Krahmer (Tilburg).
IMOGEN is funded by the Dutch Organisation for Scientific Research
(NWO), as part of the new national research programme IMIX: Interactive
Multi-modal Information eXtraction (http://www.nwo.nl/imix).Other
projects in this program are aimed at speech recognition (Nijmegen),
QA using machine learning (Tilburg) and QA based on parsing
(Groningen). The results from the different IMIX projects will be
integrated in a common demonstrator to be developed within the
program. This means that throughout the IMOGEN project, there will be
close collaboration with all groups involved in IMIX. The demonstrator
will be a QA-system (probably in a medical domain) with multimodal
input and input.
Ph.D. position (four years)
The Ph.D. student will work on the IMOGEN subproject focusing on
multimodal, adaptive output generation. As a starting point for this
research, an existing language generation system for Dutch may be
used. This will have to be extended with a modality choice model
determining the most appropriate modalities or combination of
modalities for an effective information presentation. A further
extension is to make modality choice and language generation adaptive
to certain properties of the current situation (and possibly the
user). The Ph.D. student will also be responsible for linking together
the different components of the multimodal generation system
(including visualisation and speech synthesis,subproject 2). The
research will culminate in the writing and defense of a Ph.D. thesis.
The Ph.D. project will be carried out at the University of Twente (TKI
Research Group) but there will be a close cooperation with the other
IMOGEN subprojects as well as with the other IMIX groups.
Applicants should have a Master's degree in computer science,
computational linguistics, or cognitive science. Programming
experience (C/C++/Perl/Java, applications, system design) is
required. Experience with language generation or multimodal interfaces
is a pro. Applicants should have, or be willing to develop, active
knowledge of spoken and written Dutch, which is the target language
within the IMIX project.
The selected candidate will get a four year contract (full-time) as a
Ph.D. student, with a gross monthly salary of EUR 1.683,-- in the
first year, increasing to EUR 2.258,-- in the fourth year. The target
starting date is November 1, 2003.
As part of his/her training the Ph.D. student will be enrolled for the
courses of the national Dutch Graduate School SIKS (School of
Information and Knowledge Systems). The University of Twente is an
equal opportunities employer.
Information and application
For more information, contact Mariet Theune via email
(theune@cs.utwente.nl) or phone (+31.40.4894311).
NB: contact persons between 17-29 September are Emiel Krahmer
(E.J.Krahmer@uvt.nl / +31.13.4663070) for information about IMOGEN, or
Anton Nijholt (anijholt@cs.utwente.nl / +31.40.4893686) for
information about doing a Ph.D. at TKI.
Applications should include cover letter, CV, and names of two
references, and should be sent before the application deadline of
October 3, 2003 by regular mail to
Dr. M. Theune
University of Twente
P.O. Box 217
7500 AE Enschede
The Netherlands
or by email to theune@cs.utwente.nl
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