14 April: fyi -- phd funding, DK
Index of April 2010 | Index of year: 2010 | Full index
PhD Scholarship in Question Answering
Within the framework of the ESICT (Experience-oriented Sharing of
health knowledge via Information and Communication Technology)
research project, Centre for Language Technology wishes to appoint a
PhD scholar from September 1, 2010 or later for a duration of up to
three years. Place of employment will be at the Faculty of Humanities,
University of Copenhagen.
This PhD will be part of a research team consisting of two additional
PhD students of the ESICT project and of researchers from the
University of Copenhagen, the Technical University of Denmark and the
University Medical Center Freiburg. The ESICT project is supported by
the Danish Council for Strategic Research. Project description
The ESICT project aims at providing citizens with an innovative Danish
information system on health and disease based on information
technology, language technology and formalized medical knowledge. The
ESICT system will allow users to ask questions in natural language
which will be answered the same way. Such a system addresses demands
expected to become increasingly important; citizens must be able to
take more responsibility for their own health, e.g. by navigating
available information and acting in accordance with disease related
information provided.
The project is highly cross-disciplinary by using and creating
methodologies related to three broad subject areas: information
technology, humanities and health science. The basic idea is
ambitious: to employ relations, descriptions and concepts from
ontologies such as the SNOMED CT (Systematized Nomenclature of
Medicine-Clinical Terms) ontology and extract knowledge from other
medical data sources in order to generate answers for the questions
formulated by the citizens. Focusing on two widespread diseases as
pilot applications, the project will demonstrate feasibility and costs
of a large-scale application including other medical fields.
PhD research project
The work of the PhD student will consist mainly of research within the
field of question answering. The main task will be to investigate and
implement the question analysis and answer generation components of
the system, probably as a hybrid solution where ontological as well as
statistical approaches are included. In a question answering system
the information to be presented as an answer is often not available in
a well-worded form, but is rather distributed over various resources,
and thus the question (i.e. its vocabulary and structural pattern)
becomes the primary basis not only for retrieval of information, but
also for the wording of an answer. Research tasks can include
elaboration of typologies of question/answer patterns and improved
methods for automatic identification of the relevant answer type,
e.g. a list, yes/no or a full sentence. Research in
esp. linguistically correct answers is still a relatively unexplored
field and therefore allows the PhD student to contribute substantially
to this research field.
The appointee should be interested in the following topics and have qualifications within more than one of them:
Danish syntax
Natural language parsing and generation
Question answering systems
Knowledge representation
Natural language semantics
Formal logic
Machine learning
Corpus linguistics
Further Information
For further information about the post, please contact project manager Bente Maegaard, Head of Centre, on e-mail:
HYPERLINK "mailto:bmaegaard@hum.ku.dk"
bmaegaard@hum.ku.dk
or telephone: +45 35 32 90 74 or Jrgen Wedekind, Senior Research Associate on e-mail: jwedekind@hum.ku.dk or telephone: + 45 35 32 90 76
Qualification requirements
In connection with the appointment to the fellowship special
importance will be attached to the applicant having the following
qualifications: a Masters Degree or a Masters Degree expected to be
completed during the summer of 2010.
Application
Applicants need to hold a two-year Master's degree (120 ECTS) or the
equivalent, or expect to receive such by 30 September 2010. Applicants
shall have submitted their thesis at the time of application, to the
extent the thesis forms part of their Master's programme. Applicants
with a non-Danish Master's degree will have their degree assessed by
The Danish Agency for International Education to establish, if their
Master's degree of the applicant is equivalent to a Danish Master's
degree. More information about
The Danish Agency for International Education
is available at:
HYPERLINK "http://www.studyindenmark.dk/"
http://www.studyindenmark.dk/
Employment as a PhD scholar occurs pursuant to the applicable rules of
the Faculty of Humanities, as well as between the Ministry of Finance
and the Danish Confederation of Professional Associations (AC). Under
this agreement, the PhD fellow is obliged - without further
remuneration - to carry out allotted work to an extent corresponding
to a total of 840 working hours in the case of a three-year contract.
Enrolment as a PhD student at the Faculty of Humanities' Graduate School is a precondition for employment as a PhD scholar. A description of the PhD study programme is available at:
HYPERLINK "http://www.humanities.ku.dk/research/phd/"
http://www.humanities.ku.dk/research/phd/
Applications shall be submitted via the electronic application system efond. Do not submit any publications. Application form and application guidelines on research proposal and required enclosures are available at:
HYPERLINK "http://www.humanities.ku.dk/research/phd/Announcements/"
http://www.humanities.ku.dk/research/phd/Announcements/
A certified copy of the applicant's Master's Degree diploma needs to
be submitted as one of the enclosures to the
application. Certification shall be by a public authority such as the
institution having issued the diploma or a public bureau specialising
in diploma certification. The applicant may be asked to submit the
originally certified copy of the Master's Degree diploma after the
application deadline.
Closing date for applications: 15 May 2010 at 12 noon (Central
European time). No supplementary documents will be considered after
this deadline. As an equal opportunity employer, the Faculty of
Humanities invites applications from all interested candidates
regardless of gender, age, ethnic origin or religion.
For any further questions contact the PhD Centre (HYPERLINK "mailto:phdcenter@hum.ku.dk" phdcenter@hum.ku.dk) tel. +45 3532 9223.
Index of April 2010 | Index of year: 2010 | Full index