28 October: fyi -- natural language technology, Spain
Index of October 2011 | Index of year: 2011 | Full index
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Postdoc Position in Language Technologies
The SINAI research group, Computer Science Department, University of
Jaén (Spain) offers one PhD position in the FIRST project (A Flexible
Interactive Reading Support Tool) funded by the EU-FP7. The main
objective of the FIRST project is to implement, deploy, and evaluate
technology to support the authoring of accessible content in
Bulgarian, English, and Spanish for users with autistic spectrum
disorders (ASD) with a view to widening inclusion and empowerment in
Europe.
Recent developments in Language Technology (LT) have enabled the
processing of natural languages. These technologies can analyse
language structures and their meanings, and also generate
useful/meaningful text. These advances have brought many benefits to
the EU, of which machine translation is an example. Nevertheless, very
little effort has been made to apply these technologies for the
benefit of people with ASD. We aim to improve this situation, and to
develop and deploy LT to address, and thus alleviate the
aforementioned language deficits of people with ASD. More
specifically, LT will be used to reduce and/or remove structural
complexity and ambiguity in meaning in texts. Additional content, such
as illustrative pictures, concise summaries of documents, pre-reading
questions on related concepts, and document navigation tools, which
are shown to have a role to play in improving the comprehensibility of
written documents can also be generated. At present, LT are mature
enough to provide a sound basis for the development of such components
(to automatically detect and remove obstacles to reading comprehension
and to generate additional content to facilitate reading
comprehension). This, in turn, will improve the ability to access to
written information by people with ASD, thereby reducing their risk of
exclusion.
The role will require the post holder to undertake research and
software development and to work with the doctoral students. This is
an opportunity to work in a well-connected international team with
world-leading reputations in Natural Language Processing (NLP). The
Postdoc will collaborate with team members in the development of new
tools and in presentations and publications about the project. The
ability to write up research findings for submission to peer-reviewed
conference and journals as well interpersonal and communication skills
to present findings locally and at conferences are desirable.
Position requirements:
* PhD in Computational Linguistics or a closely related field
* International track record, evidenced by peer-reviewed publications
* Excellent programming skills (C, Java, Phyton...) and experience in NLP
* Able to work as member of a closely collaborating team
* Willing to reach out to and collaborate with national and
international colleagues in related research disciplines
Appointment and Salary:
The position is available for an initial period of 6 months with
possible extension to 2 more years. Depending on training and work
experience, the maximum monthly salary will be € 3.000.
To apply, please email maite@ujaen.es a cover letter with your
motivation and your curriculum vitae.
Closing date for applications: 15th November 2011
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