9 November: fyi -- phd position, NL

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PH.D. POSITION: MEDIATING NONVERBAL CUES BEWEEN REMOTE MEETING
PARTICIPANTS



The Human Media Interaction group of the University of Twente, Enschede,
the Netherlands, invites applications for a Ph.D. position on nonverbal
communication during conversations and meetings. Successful applicants
will join a project on multimodal interaction in smart environments. The
Ph.D. research aims at developing techniques and tools for analysing and
mediating relevant nonverbal communicative acts.





MOTIVATION

Current tele-conferencing and remote collaboration systems do not meet
the communication needs of their users. Face-to-face interactions
provide a feeling of connection and other shared interaction
characteristics of communication (co-presence) that are not yet
available in computer mediated communication. This project aims to
analyse the form and functions of nonverbal interaction during
face-to-face interaction and possible ways to mediate them in a shared
virtual environment (a remote meeting and collaboration system).
Starting point of the research is a large data collection of four
persons face-to-face meetings. A comparative analysis of this data with
data obtained with remote meeting technology is expected. Visualizing,
possibly in some other modality, the nonverbal interactional signals
from gaze, gesture, posture, etc. and studying the effect on the way
this influences the flow of conversation (the turn-taking process, for
instance) in a shared virtual environment is a possible direction of the
research





RESEARCH ENVIRONMENT AND REQUIREMENTS

The research will be performed in a multi-disciplinary team that is part
of the Centre of Telematics and Information Technology of the University
of Twente and of a large European IST project of the AMI Consortium
(http://www.amiproject.org). The candidate is expected to have a
background in computer science, in particular human-computer
interaction. Some knowledge of one er more of the areas is an advantage:
computer vision, machine learning, visualisation techniques (such as
virtual reality), and computational linguistics. Affinity with cognitive
approaches in human-computer interaction is expected.





CONDITIONS OF EMPLOYMENT

The PhD salary starts at EUR 1933 gross per month and grows to EUR 2472
gross per month (figures based on full-time employment). Duration of the
contract: four years. PhD students will be able to participate in the
Dutch research school for Information and Knowledge Systems (SIKS,
http://www.siks.nl/).





APPLICATION PROCEDURE

Applications (in English or Dutch) should be sent to:

Prof. Dr. A. Nijholt

Human Media Interaction (HMI) group

Faculty of EEMCS, University of Twente

PO Box 217, 7500 AE Enschede, the Netherlands

Phone: +31 53 4893740

Email: anijholt@cs.utwente.nl



Make sure to include the following:

- a letter of application

- a curriculum vitae

- the names and email addresses of two references





For more information on HMI and its projects see
http://hmi.ewi.utwente.nl/ or contact prof.dr. A. Nijholt
(anijholt@cs.utwente.nl).

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