10 October: fyi -- text mining, Australia

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Researcher / Senior Researcher Position in
Text Mining for Biomedical Applications

NICTA Victoria Research Laboratory
Melbourne, Australia

Closing date: October 24, 2008

National ICT Australia (NICTA) is seeking a researcher for a project
in Text and Language Processing for Biomedical Applications.
Appointment may be made at the Researcher or at the Senior Researcher
level. The appointment is for at least 2 years, potentially renewable
for a 3rd year, to commence in January 2009 (or as soon as possible
after that). Remuneration is at an internationally competitive level.
NICTA welcomes and supports international applicants.

The appointee will work with NICTA research staff, engineering staff,
University of Melbourne faculty and postgraduate students, and
external biomedical collaborators (especially within Melbourne's Bio21
precinct) to develop new techniques in information access and
presentation, document processing, and text mining, with application
to the biomedical research and clinical domain. Expected outcomes will
include fundamental research, publications in high-impact venues,
development of novel IP, and prototype systems and demonstrators
(built with support of staff engineers). Other duties will include
working with external biomedical partners to understand and respond to
needs, and supervision of University of Melbourne research students.

Key requirements and selection criteria for the position include:
- a PhD in Computer Science, Computational Linguistics, Artificial
Intelligence, or a related discipline;
- a strong track record of publication in respected journals and
international conferences;
- demonstrated expertise in a research area related to the goals of
the project, including: information retrieval, natural language
processing, question answering, human computer interaction in an IR
setting, parsing, named entity recognition and resolution, text
summarisation, ontology building / integration, system efficiency;
- good interpersonal skills and a demonstrated commitment to working
collaboratively in a research team and delivering on team goals;
- excellent communication skills in a variety of contexts, including
presentation of research and liasing with external collaborators;
- a strong interest in collaborating with external domain partners to
understand their needs and to jointly develop solutions;
- applicants to the Senior Researcher level are expected to have
demonstrated ability to craft a research agenda and to effectively
supervise junior staff and research students.

Other desirable skills and selection criteria include:
- previous experience in the biomedical domain;
- programming skills in a variety of languages;
- demonstrated experience in statistical techniques for NLP and/or
experimental design and analysis for computer science research;
- an interest in developing Intellectual Property that may lead to
commercial development by NICTA.

National ICT Australia (NICTA) is Australia.s ICT Research Centre of
Excellence. NICTA brings together world-class researchers and
professional staff to enhance their skills and build a culture of
entrepreneurship and achievement in use-inspired research. This will
build Australia's ICT capacity into the future.

NICTA's Victoria Research Laboratory (VRL) is housed on the University
of Melbourne campus, in the Parkville precinct of Melbourne, and
within walking distance to one of the world's richest congregation of
biomedical hospitals and research institutions. NICTA VRL has made a
strong commitment to developing its Bioiformatics research program;
the Snr/Researcher will be encouraged to work with researchers from
the wider Bioinformatics team, as well as the other researchers on
this specific project. VRL has establised partnerships with a number
of Melbourne's leading biomedical research institutions and biomedical
projects with international profile; further collaborative
partnerships are constantly being developed.

Further information:
Please contact Dr. Lawrence Cavedon (lawrence.cavedon@nicta.com.au)
with enquiries or to register interest ; visit the project website at:
http://nicta.com.au/research/projects/BioTALA

Applications:
Please visit NICTA Careers (http://nicta.com.au/director/careers.cfm)
to view the criteria essential to this role and to apply online.

Closing date: October 24, 2008

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