PostDoc in Signal and Image Processing, Paris

POST-DOCTORAL POSITION - 2009 Department : Signal and Image Processing http://www.tsi.enst.fr/

Lab : LTCI UMR Telecom ParisTech/CNRS 5141 http://www.ltci.enst.fr/

TOPICS : machine-learning for structured data, social networks, random graphs, graphical models

Description : The Department Signal and Image Processing (TSI) of Telecom ParisTech (France) is offering a one year post-doctoral position in Machine-Learning. The post-doctoral fellow will develop and implement machine-learning procedures and statistical techniques for investigating the way information is spread through small social networks (« ego networks »). The main focus of this research project lies on information related to knowledge about dietary risks.

Required diplomas and skills : candidates will be recruited at the level of a PhD in Mathematics or Statistics. They will have confirmed skills in mathematical modelling, data analysis, statistical or machine learning methods, mathematical programming (Matlab or R), and will be highly motivated for applications to social sciences.

Funds : position is funded by a new Grant « Futur & Rupture « (Institut Telecom).

The Project Team: the candidate will enjoy a challenging and rewarding working environment, within a top leading laboratory in the field of Information and Communication Theory.

Members : Stéphan Clémençon (Telecom ParisTech - TSI), Fabrice Rossi (Telecom ParisTech – INFRES), Nicolas Vayatis (ENS Cachan - CMLA), Sandrine Blanchemanche (INRA Unité Met@risk), Akos Rona-Tas (UCSD Dept of Sociology).

Position starting March 2009, in Paris (France)

Net salary : ranging from 2200 to 2700 euros per month (depending on experience of the candidate)

Interested applicants should sent C.V. to :
Stéphan Clémençon stephan.clemencon@telecom-paristech.fr
Telecom ParisTech ‐ 37 rue Dareau ‐ 75014 Paris – France
Tel : +33 1 45 81 78 07, Fax : +33 1 45 81 71 58

Summer Schools in Logic and Learning

An Open Invitation to attend the Summer Schools in Logic and Learning 26 January to 6 February 2009 Australian National University, Canberra, Australia

One of the grand challenges in science and engineering is to build computer systems that are trustworthy and intelligent. While achieving this goal could be many decades away, computer systems are clearly getting smarter and more reliable year by year and human society is becoming more reliant on exploiting their increasing intelligence. Logic and machine learning are two indispensable parts of the efforts to meet this challenge.

Join us for a new summer school experience where you have a unique two week opportunity to combine the solid foundations of logic and machine learning, with an introductory track in artificial intelligence in the second week.

Courses are taught by some of the world's leading computer scientists and blend practical and theoretical short courses with lectures and demonstrations in state-of-the-art computer facilities at ANU.

Courses and Speakers

Artificial Intelligence Courses http://ssll.cecs.anu.edu.au/speakers/ai

Logic Courses http://ssll.cecs.anu.edu.au/speakers/lss

Machine Learning Courses http://ssll.cecs.anu.edu.au/speakers/mlss

Fees and Registration http://ssll.cecs.anu.edu.au/registration

More information http://ssll.cecs.anu.edu.au/

If you would like to discuss this invitation in more detail, including advice on suitable candidacy, please go to http://ssll.cecs.anu.edu.au/about/contact

The Summer Schools in Logic and Learning are supported by ANU and NICTA.

Committee

Dr Tiberio Caetano, Convener
Professor John Slaney, Convener
Dr Alwen Tiu (Acting Convener)
Diane Kossatz
Michelle Moravec

PhD Studentship in Interactive Question Answering

PhD Studentship in Interactive Question Answering
(£12,000 per year)
Closing date: 16th Jan 2009
http://clg.wlv.ac.uk/jobs/

The Research Group in Computational Linguistics, University of Wolverhampton invites applications for a three-year-funded PhD studentship in Computational Linguistics. The successful candidate is expected to carry out research in the domain of interactive question answering. We are looking for candidates with a good degree in Computational Linguistics, Linguistics, Computer Science or Information Sciences, with programming skills and some experience in Natural Language Processing. The studentship is part funded by Unilever.

Required skills:

• degree in Computational Linguistics, Linguistics, Computer Science or Information Sciences
• experience with at least one of the following: Java, Perl, C++, .NET
• experience in Natural Language Processing
• good command of the English language

Desirable skills:

• Master's degree in Computational Linguistics, Linguistics, Computer Science or Information Sciences
• experience in question answering, information extraction and/or dialogue systems
• familiarity with a wide range of programming environments and operating systems

Applications should be sent to

Dr. Constantin Orasan
Research Institute of Information and Language Processing
University of Wolverhampton
Stafford St.
Wolverhampton
WV1 1SB
United Kingdom
E-mail: C.Orasan@wlv.ac.uk

and must include:

• completed application form available from http://clg.wlv.ac.uk/jobs/PhD-application.pdf
• CV
• copy of university degree (in English)
• copy of transcript listing all university marks (in English)
• evidence of postgraduate qualification if applicable
• a covering letter in which candidates explain why they have applied for the studentship, give details of their research interests/experience, background, programming skills and an outline of
• any experience in Natural Language Processing or Linguistics.

Applications should be made both by email and surface mail. The closing date for applications is 16th January 2009. The short-listed applicants will be interviewed by email and telephone in the week beginning 26th January 2009.

The studentship includes a maintenance grant of 12,000 GBP a year and also covers the tuition fees for 3 years.

The successful candidate is expected to start as soon as possible after 1st February 2009. She or he will be working in a vibrant research environment, engaging in active research. The studentship is part-funded by Unilever.

Established by Prof. Mitkov in 1998, the Research Group in Computational Linguistics is a highly successful one, delivering cutting-edge research in a number of NLP areas such as anaphora resolution, automatic summarisation, question answering, lexical knowledge acquisition, text categorisation, named entity recognition, information extraction, corpus construction and annotation, automatic terminology processing, multilingual processing, and multiple-choice question generation. To a large extent, this research has been undertaken in projects funded by major UK funding bodies and commercial partners. The recent UK Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) results have confirmed the Research Group in Computational Linguistics as one of the top research performers in the UK.

PostDoctoral Research Associate, Open University, UK

Natural Language Generation group

(http://mcs.open.ac.uk/nlg/)

Centre for Research in Computing
(http://crc.open.ac.uk)
The Open University, UK

"CODA - COherent Dialogue Automatically generated from text"

Position based in Milton Keynes, UK (40 minutes from central London by train) Duration: 2 years (Full-time) Expected start date: March 1, 2009

*** Project Overview:

The Department of Computing at The Open University (OU) has recently been awarded research funds by the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) to develop the theory and technology for automatic transformation of text in monologue form to information-delivering dialogue, specifically dialogue between a 'layman' (e.g., patient or student) and an 'expert' (e.g., doctor or tutor).

The project will include construction of a parallel corpus of monologues and dialogues that express the same information. The corpus will be employed to develop and implement a system for mapping spans of text in monologue form to dialogue. For example, a text describing when and how to take a medicine may be transformed into the text of a dialogue between a patient and pharmacist. The aim is for the text in dialogue form to present the same information as the original text, but in a more memorable and engaging way.

In collaboration with the visiting researcher to the project, Dr. Prendinger of the National Institute of Informatics in Tokyo, the project will also investigate how the proposed technology for mapping monologue to dialogue can be interfaced with state-of-the-art multimedia information presentation systems (involving computer-animated characters and speech synthesis). The project will build on the pilot study described in Piwek et al. (2007).

Piwek, P., H. Hernault, H. Prendinger and M. Ishizuka (2007). Generating Dialogues between Virtual Agents Automatically from Text. In: Intelligent Virtual Agents: Proceedings of IVA07, LNAI 4722, pages 161-174. Springer Verlag.

*** A Research Position will be available on the project for:

a candidate with a Ph.D. degree in Computer Science (or related area)/equivalent experience, and good programming skills (preferably in Java).

Interest in all of the following areas and knowledge in at least one of the areas is desirable:

• Paraphrasing/Text-to-Text generation/Machine Translation
• Natural Language Generation
• Dialogue Modelling
• Corpus linguistics

£24,152 - £28,839 according to experience & qualifications.

Closing date for applications: 31 January 2009. Interviews are expected to be in February. We welcome informal enquiries. Please contact Paul Piwek for further details and information on the formal application process.


Dr. Paul Piwek
Lecturer in the Computing Department
Centre for Research in Computing
The Open University
Walton Hall, Milton Keynes, UK

Web: http://mcs.open.ac.uk/pp2464

Postdoctoral position in Text Analysis (University of Pisa, Italy)

The research will be conducted as part of an undergoing project on semantic tagging of Wikipedia, in cooperation with Yahoo! Research and the Institute of Computational Linguistics of the CNR (http://medialab.di.unipi.it/wiki/index.php/ Analisi di testi per il Semantic Web e il Question Answering).

The research will be conducted at the Department of Informatics with an opportunity to spend periods at Yahoo! Research Barcelona.

The successful candidates will have a strong background in computer science and knowledge of statistical machine learning techniques, with emphasis on text and natural language analysis. They are expected to provide leadership on technical issues and well as to contribute to the development of object oriented high performance applications.

Skills and Experience

• A background in Computer Science with specialization in Computational Linguistics or Natural Language Processing
  
• Expertise in text mining or information retrieval
  
• Thorough understanding of software development methodologies
  
• Excellent programming skills in C++ and Python
  
• Expert-level understanding of statistical machine learning techniques as applied to text analytics, e.g., information extraction, summarization, classification, clustering, tone/sentiment analysis, relevance ranking
  

Education

PhD in Computer Science, Computational Linguistics or equivalent.

Application

The details of the call are available at: http://medialab.di.unipi.it/Announcement/BandoAssegno.pdf

Closing date for application is January 12, 2009.

General information about the Department of Informatics can be found at http://www.di.unipi.it.

Open Faculty Position Assistant or Associate Professor

Announcement Open Faculty Position Assistant or Associate Professor without tenure due to source of funding (WOT)

The Northwest Institute of Genetic Medicine in partnership with the University of Washington in Seattle is seeking a new biomedical and health informatics faculty member at the level of assistant or associate professor in the Division of Biomedical and Health Informatics (www.bhi.washington.edu) without tenure due to source of funding (WOT).

The Northwest Institute of Genetic Medicine (NWIGM) is a recently established multi-disciplinary multi-institutional program funded by the State of Washington Life Sciences Discovery Fund. The primary goals of the NWIGM are a) to facilitate the design, development, and execution of translational genetic studies that bridge basic and clinical research at academic institutions and biotechnology companies, and b) to promote outcomes research on the role of genetic testing in clinical medicine and its impact on the provision of healthcare. Key activities of the NWIGM include consultation related to study design, grant writing, and generation of pilot data.

Key disciplines involved in the NWIGM include the Division of Medical Genetics in the Department of Medicine, the Division of Genetics in the Department of Pediatrics, the Department of Genome Sciences, the Center for Biomedical Statistics in the Department of Biostatistics, and the Division of Biomedical and Health Informatics in the Department of Medical Education and Biomedical Informatics. The organizations that have partnered to form NWIGM include the University of Washington, Seattle Children's Research Institute, and the Center for Health Studies at Group Health in Seattle. NWIGM also partners with the regional Institute of Translational Health Sciences (www.iths.org) which is an NIH CTSA funded center for clinical/translational research. The leadership for the NWIGM includes Dr. Gail Jarvik (Director), Dr. Bruce Weir, Dr. Deborah Nickerson, Dr. Michael Bamshad, and Dr. Peter Tarczy-Hornoch.

We encourage applications from candidates committed to biomedical informatics research in the area of genetic medicine both in the area of fostering discovery and in the area of applying the new discoveries. The responsibilities of the position include the following areas of activity: a) developing an independent program of research in the general area of linking electronic medical record phenotypic data (including natural language processing of text notes) with biological/genomic data sets in the context of genomic medicine, b) working with students and post-docs interested in this research area, c) providing consultation related to informatics support in this area related to grant writing, study design, and generation of pilot data, d) establishing collaborations with NWIGM members, and e) overseeing the development of an informatics consult service within the NWIGM.

The primary appointment will be 100% FTE with a 12-month service period in the Department of Medical Education and Biomedical Informatics in the School of Medicine with opportunities for joint or adjunct appointment as appropriate. The initial appointment is without tenure due to funding (WOT). Generally, if an award of tenure would be proposed for consideration it would be after an individual has attained the full professor rank. Full funding through the NWIGM is available for 3 ½ years after which it is expected that the faculty member will be supported by a combination of grants and revenue from the NWIGM.

Candidates must have a doctoral degree in a core discipline of biomedical informatics, computer
science, or similar as well as training in biomedical informatics. Strong training in research methods is required; and experience with genetic association studies and/or natural language processing and/or electronic medical records is highly desirable. Demonstrated ability
to initiate and successfully conduct research is highly desired as well.

Review of applications will begin in Fall 2008 and continue until filled. We are seeking candidates available to start working Summer 2009 or earlier. Please send a statement of interest and qualifications, detailed curriculum vitae, and four letters of reference to:


NWIGM Informatics Faculty Search
c/o Donna Rowe
Department of Medical Education and Biomedical Informatics
Box 357240
University of Washington
Seattle, WA 98195-7430
www.bhi.washington.edu

email: zermatt@u.washington.edu
phone: 206-221-3322

Search committee chair:

Peter Tarczy-Hornoch, MD
Head and Professor
Division of Biomedical and Health Informatics
Department of Medical Education and Biomedical Informatics
School of Medicine

University of Washington faculty engage in teaching, research, and service. The University of Washington is an affirmative action, equal opportunity employer. The University is building a culturally diverse faculty and staff and strongly encourages applications from women, minorities, individuals with disabilities, and covered veterans.

Bioinformatics PostDoc Position

The Alberta Ingenuity Centre of Machine Learning [AICML], and the PolyomX (cancer genomics) researchers of the Cross Cancer Institute of the Alberta Cancer Board [ACB] are looking to hire a bright responsible Post Doctoral Fellow, to work with us in Edmonton on various bioinformatic projects: to help analyze biological and medical data, from microarrays, single nucleotide polyomorphisms (SNPs), and metabolic profiles, both to produce effective classifiers/regressors and also help identify the relevant biomarkers for further analysis.

The ideal candidate is knowledgable in both biology (genetics, molecular biology and population genetics) and machine learning, especially graphical models, learning algorithms (Weka), and also tricks for dimensionality reduction -- ie, coping with "large p, small n" problems. Interest and ability in programming (Matlab) is essential.

This PDF will take a lead role in coordinating a team of computing scientists (students and staff of the AICML, as well as several principle investigators) with researchers and clinicians from the ACB, on various projects. This may involve initiating new projects (from designing new experiments and obtaining funding), as well as working on existing projects, to understand a large inventory of already collected data. This is a great chance to both help solveimportant real-world problems, and also produce high-quality publications, in both artificial intelligence and medical journals.

This position is available immediately, for up to 2 years (possible extension of one more year, for a total of 3 years). The salary is commensurate with experience; we are an equal opportunity employer.

If you are interested, please send your information

• a cover letter, indicating why you qualify;
• your academic transcript;
• your CV, including a description of any previous research or industrial jobs you have held; and
• a list of your references, preferably including their email addresses.

to R Greiner: greiner -at- cs -dot- ualberta -dot- ca. For full consideration, we must receive your complete application by 15/January/2009.

(This information appears in http://www.cs.ualberta.ca/~greiner/PDF-AICML-ACB.html.)