11 July: FYI -- PhD funding, NLG (Tilburg, NL)
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We are looking for a new and enthusiastic colleague for a PhD project on
NATURAL LANGUAGE GENERATION FOR PERSONALISED HEALTH COMMUNICATION
The position is part of the project “Helping cancer patients to choose
the best treatment: Data-driven shared decision making on cancer
treatment for individual patients”, funded by NWO-ENW DATA2PERSON. The
position is in the Department of Communication and Cognition (DCC) of
the Tilburg School of Humanities and Digital Sciences (TSHD), and is a
collaboration with the Tilburg School of Social and Behavioral
Sciences (TSB) and The Netherlands Comprehensive Cancer Organization
(IKNL).
Project description
When someone is first diagnosed with cancer, patient and doctor
jointly need to decide which treatment to opt for from the range of
possible treatments. Decision tools have been developed to support
this difficult process, but, unfortunately, these tend to be generic
and population-based, focus exclusively on long-term survival and lack
personalised explanations. Moreover, they are not easily
understandable and accessible for patients, and are difficult to
maintain and keep up to date. As a result their usefulness is limited.
In this project, we will address these issues by developing an
application that can generate multimodal personalised descriptions
(text and graphics) of treatment options based on data of millions of
Dutch cancer patients. Our team will include two new PhDs. One PhD
(hosted by TSB) will develop new statistical models, determining the
advantages and disadvantages of the relevant treatment options for
individual patients. Based on the person and tumor characteristics,
these models not only include predictions for (long term) survival,
but also factors like side-effects of treatment and quality of life
after treatment.
The other PhD (hosted by TSHD, and for which we are currently hiring)
will develop a data-to-text system which automatically generates
personalised explanations of the outcomes, using non-technical
language and visualisations. This system is enhanced with personalised
explanations of uncertainties and risks associated with different
treatments.
End users (doctors and patients) are involved in all stages of the
project, from the beginning, to gauge their wishes and needs, to the
end, to evaluate the systems that were developed. We aim to show that
our data-driven, personalised approach makes patients more
knowledgeable about different treatment options and empowers them
during shared decision making about treatments.
Your tasks
You will design, implement and evaluate a software system that is
capable of explaining personalised health statistics related to
treatment options. Based on state-of-the-art techniques for this, from
Natural Language Generation (NLG), Natural Language Processing (NLP)
and Artificial Intelligence (AI), you will study how to explain
individualised treatment information to patients via automatically
generated textual and visual reports, for which a demonstration system
will be developed and evaluated with doctors and patients. You will
collaborate with communication researchers from TSHD, statisticians
from TSB, and data scientists and epidemiologists at IKNL (where you
are expected to also spend one day per week). Your findings will be
reported in publications, which form the basis of your PhD thesis.
Your profile
For the position we seek a candidate with a (research) master in a
relevant area, including, but not limited to: computational
linguistics, natural language processing, artificial intelligence,
computational health informatics, (health) data science, medical
informatics, computer science or computational communication science.
You are a motivated researcher who is comfortable with working in a
multidisciplinary research team, has strong statistical and
programming/scripting skills, and an excellent command of
English. Knowledge of Dutch is an advantage, but not strictly
necessary. Importantly, you are passionate about health care and are
motivated to empower patients using digital tools.
Information
For more information on the position, please contact prof.dr. Emiel
Krahmer (E.J.Krahmer@uvt.nl). A longer
description of the project is available upon request.
What we offer
Tilburg University is rated among the top Dutch employers and offers
very good fringe benefits (it is one of the best non-profit employers
in the Netherlands), such as an options model for terms and conditions
of employment and excellent reimbursement of moving expenses. The
collective labor agreement of Tilburg University applies.
The selected candidate will start with a contract for one year,
concluded by an evaluation. Upon a positive outcome of the first-year
evaluation, the candidate will be offered an employment contract for
the remaining three years. It is also possible to work 80% instead of
fulltime.
The candidate will be hosted at TSHD (Tilburg) and is expected to work
one day a week at IKNL (Eindhoven).
Researchers from outside the Netherlands may qualify for a tax-free
allowance equal to 30% of their taxable salary. The university will
apply for such an allowance on their behalf. The Faculty will provide
assistance in finding suitable accommodation. The PhD candidates will
be ranked in the Dutch university job ranking system (UFO) as a
PhD-student (promovendus) with a starting fulltime salary of €2,266
gross per month in the first year (€31,600 on yearly basis), up to €
2.897 the fourth year. The selected candidate is expected to have
written a PhD thesis, which may be based on articles, by the end of
the contract.
Applications
Applications should include:
- Cover letter,
- Curriculum Vitae,
- Copy of the university marks (grade list),
- Names of two references.
Applications should be sent before the application deadline of August
15, 2018. Interviews are expected to be held in the last week of
August.
The only way to apply is online by following this link:
http://www.tilburguniversity.edu/about-tilburg-university/working-at/wp/
--
Emiel Krahmer
Tilburg University Language Production group
Department of Communication and Cognition
Tilburg School of Humanities and Digital Sciences
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