27 April: fyi -- phd funding, NL
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PH.D. POSITION: MULTIMODAL INTERACTION IN CRISIS MANAGEMENT ENVIRONMENTS
The Human Media Interaction group of the University of Twente, Enschede,
the Netherlands, invites applications for a Ph.D. position on multimodal
interaction. Successful applicants will join a project on multimodal
interaction in smart crisis management environments. The Ph.D. research
aims at developing techniques for preventing and detecting tunnel vision
by supporting critical thinking of crisis managers.
MOTIVATION
Crisis managers have to make crucial decisions in real-time during
crisis situations. The essential information to create a correct
description of the reality of a crisis situation must be based upon the
actual state of the world. The latter is obtained by fusing current as
well as historical information, from both sensors and humans. Because
such descriptions are necessarily based upon incomplete knowledge, the
description is often incomplete, ambiguous, or even wrong. Also, the
order in which the information arrives has a great effect on how people
perceive the crisis situation. In a crisis situation, decisions must
often be made under high workloads, and within limited amounts of time.
Especially under such circumstances, people tend to create one coherent
description of the real world and then tend to stick to it by focusing
on or selecting information that confirms their initial beliefs. To
counter this confirmation bias, reactive and proactive support can be
used by systems that possess both situational awareness and awareness of
the state of the crisis manager. The latter can be obtained from
observing and analyzing the focus of attention and the multimodal
interaction between the human and the system.
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 Dutch national (BSIKS) project coordinated by the
DCIS Lab in Delft. The candidate is expected to have a background in
computer science with knowledge about natural language processing and
machine learning techniques, and affinity with cognitive approaches in
human-computer interaction.
CONDITIONS OF EMPLOYMENT
The PhD salary starts at EUR 1877 gross per month and grows to EUR 2407
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 referents
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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