Position as PhD Research Fellow (Stipendiat SKO 1017) available at the Department of Informatics, University of Oslo, Norway

The fellowship is for a period of four years, with a starting date as soon as possible, but no later than 01.10.2012.

Job description:

This fellowship is associated with a new national initiative to create a computational research infrastructure for the increased application of Natural Language Processing in the humanities and social sciences, in connection to the pan-European CLARIN initiative (http://www.clarin.eu).  The fellowship will be based at the Language Technology Group (LTG) at IFI, whose main contribution to the project will be web-accessible, large-scale analysis and modelling tools for several languages.  These services will be realized on top of the Norwegian national HPC facilities (specifically, a very large and heterogeneous cluster), and development and deployment will be coordinated with the UiO IT services for scientific computing.  Candidate PhD projects in this context could, for example, investigate archtectural and interface aspects in complex NLP work flows, issues of scalability and parallelization in common NLP tasks, or candidate downstream interfaces and use cases for the infrastructure.

The LT Group at IFI has its focus in hybrid approaches to Natural Language Processing, with emphasis on the interplay of grammar, statistics, and semantics.  The ideal candidate will have some competency in rule-based and statistical methods within Computational Linguistics, as well as an understanding of the use of these methods in core NLP tasks like tagging, parsing, information extraction, sentiment analysis, or others.  Such a hybrid academic background will be a strong plus, but not an absolute requirement.  The group pursues a predominantly applied research agenda, hence solid implementation experience and general technical CS competency are desirable for this position.

The project in part builds on existing resources, for example from the DELPH-IN, ParGram, and VISL repositories, for English, Norwegian, and other languages.  Some prior experience within the relevant frameworks or familiarity with some of the tools involved would be welcome; as would be experience in designing complex NLP architectures or use of high-performance computing for NLP.  Research at UiO will not target a single specific language, hence proficiency in Norwegian is not a prerequisite (but could be beneficial for the research foreseen under this fellowship).

Requirements/qualifications:

The candidate must hold an MSc degree or other equivalent education in the fields of Computer Science, with a specialization in Language Technology, or Computational Linguistics.  The position is hosted at the IFI Research Group in Language Technology (LTG).  For further background on the research environment, please see: htttp://www.mn.uio.no/ifi/english/research/groups/ltg/

Applicants are expected to include a summary of academic specialization and statement of scientific interests.

UiO (and Norway more generally) is a multi-lingual environment, where knowledge of Norwegian is not a necessity in everyday life.  However, a good command of English is required; see: http://www.mn.uio.no/english/research/doctoral-degree-and-career/regulations/proficiency-requirements.html

The purpose of the fellowship is research training leading to the successful completion of a PhD degree.  In addition to PhD research, the appointment includes 25% mandatory work duties, which for this position will be related to the abovementioned infrastructure project (i.e. in all likelihood will not comprise any teaching).

The fellowship requires admission to the PhD programme at the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences.  The application to the PhD programme must be submitted to the department no later than two months after taking up the position.  For more information see:

http://www.mn.uio.no/english/research/doctoral-degree-and-career/phd-programme/index.html

Salary:

 Pay grade: 50 - 57 (NOK 416 300 – 468 100 per year) (depending on qualifications)

The application must include:

• Application letter
• CV (summarizing education, positions and academic work, scientific publications)
• Self-assessment of academic specialization and statement of research interests
• Copies of educational certificates, transcript of records, and letters of recommendation
• Names and contact details of 2-3 references (name, relation to candidate, e-mail and telephone number)
• Copy or link to your MSc thesis

Note that all documents MUST be submitted in PDF format, and preferably combined into one single document in the order specified by the list above.

Foreign applicants are advised to attach an explanation of their University’s grading system. Please remember that all documents should be in English or a Scandinavian language.

In accordance with the University of Oslo’s equal opportunities policy, we invite applications from all interested individuals regardless of gender or ethnicity. 

UiO has an agreement for all employees, aiming to secure rights to research results a.o.