Employment opportunities posted 2012

• This is an archive of employment opportunities that were posted in 2012.

Engineer 4, NLP Software Development - Comcast Corporation (Washington DC or Philadelphia PA)

• Employer: Comcast
• Rank or Title: Engineer 4
• Specialty: Natural Language Processing, Speech Recognition, Machine Learning
• Location: Washington DC or Philadelphia
• Deadline: Applications accepted until position is filled
• Date Posted: 6 December 2012
• Contact email: brian_curtis@cable.comcast.com

Position Description

Comcast is the largest cable TV company in the world. We are looking for talented engineers to help us shape the future of content discovery for television.

To help get us there, we are hiring an experienced software engineer to develop new technology and adapt/apply existing technologies to NLP problems for the Comcast Voice Control platform. This position is part of a small team that uses Speech Recognition, Natural Language Understanding/Processing, Machine Learning along with search technologies such as SOLR/Lucene, tf/idf and relevance ranking, to extract contextually correct entity and verb semantics from speech and apply them to real world solutions across millions of connected homes.

About you

• Education Level: Bachelors Degree or Equivalent
• Field of Study: Computer Science, Engineering
• Extensive experience using Java technologies including J2SE, XML/XSLT, Apache Jakarta components and other open source software.
• Experience with statistical/modeling techniques such as CRF, HMM, SVM, KNN.
• Experience with Topic Classification, Parsing, Narrative Thread analysis, parts of speech tagging, Sphinx, metadata extraction.
• Experience with machine learning and/or algorithms.
• Experience with Hibernate, MySQL and/or NoSQL, preferably Hadoop/HBase.
• Experience with search technologies such as SOLR/Lucene and/or recommender systems.
• Experience with and understanding of Unix systems (RHEL) desirable.
• Experience in Agile development methodologies.
• Strong problem solving ability with excellent written/verbal communication and presentation skills.

If you are interested in this position and you think you might have what it takes, send your resume to brian_curtis@cable.comcast.com.

NLP Research Scientist - Nuance Communications, Inc. (Sunnyvale, CA Research Group)

• Employer: Nuance Communications, Inc.
• Rank or Title: NLP Research Scientist
• Specialty: Computational Linguistics, Natural Language Processing, Dialog Systems
• Location: Sunnyvale, CA, USA
• Deadline: Applications accepted until position is filled
• Date Posted: November 20th, 2012
• Contact email: Jennifer.Garvale@nuance.com

General Description

Nuance is the world-wide leader in voice technologies. We are now making substantial research and development investments to add natural language processing capabilities to our speech infrastructure. We are expanding our new Silicon Valley Natural Language Research laboratory. The goal of this group is to develop the next generation of intelligent, conversational agents. We seek research scientists with the following backgrounds:

• Dialog processing
• Discourse and anaphora resolution
• Multimodal generation
• Parsing
• Entity recognition
• Morphology
• Multilingual NLP
• Semantic interpretation

Responsibilities

• Ownership of a major component of the conversational system.
• Conduct research on the dialog, generation, or reasoning components, and incorporate the latest advances from major conferences in the field.
• Adapt existing components within Nuance and from previous research in the field to a new problem space and domain.
• Understand the trade-offs between multiple competing approaches, and choose the ones that are likely to have future impact on the company's products.
• Design components in a way that will generalize across domains. Minimize the code change and human effort needed for the system to work in a new domain.
• Collaborate with other scientists and engineers inside and outside of the team.
• Patent or publish experimental results or designs when appropriate.

Education/Experience

• Ph.D. in computer science, computational linguistics, linguistics, or another technical field with a focus on natural language processing.
• Solid track record in both projects and publications for natural language processing.
• Solid implementation skills in C++, Java, scripting languages.
• Knowledge of both statistical and rule-based methods for natural language processing.

Interested candidates should contact Jennifer Garvale at Jennifer.Garvale@nuance.com. For additional information about the technical aspects of the position, feel free to contact Joel Tetreault at Joel.Tetreault@nuance.com.

Postdoctoral Fellowship - Natural Language Processing

• Employer: University of Cincinnati and Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center
• Rank or Title: Postdoctoral Fellow - Natural Language Processing
• Specialty: Computational Linguistics, Natural Language Processing, Natural Language Generation
• Location: Cincinnati, OH, USA
• Deadline: Applications accepted until position is filled
• Date Posted: November 9th, 2012
• Contact email Imre.Solti@cchmc.org

Position and Requirements Are you a recent PhD graduate or getting ready to graduate with a degree in computational linguistics, computer science, artificial intelligence or closely related field? Do you want to apply your computational skills, machine learning and NLP experience to solve real world challenges to help patients by automating the clinical decision making? Do you have excellent command of both written and oral English, and first author peer reviewed journal publications?

If the answers are yes and you would like to join our team of seven dedicated researchers, programmers and annotators then please, send your most recent CV, a brief research statement and three publications in PDF file format to: Imre.Solti@cchmc.org (include "Postdoctoral Fellow - ACL Wiki" in the subject line).

We provide competitive salaries and excellent benefits. We will sponsor H1B visas for qualified candidates as necessary.

About the Institution Cincinnati Children's has over one million physician-patient encounters a year and is the second largest recipient of NIH funding among children hospitals. The hospital has over 12,000 employees. The Division of Biomedical Informatics manages a state-of-the-art 500+ CPU computing cluster. The research of the Solti Lab is funded from institutional and external (NIH) grants.

Research Programmer position - speech and language processing

• Employer: University of Minnesota
• Location: Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA
• Deadline: open until filled
• Date posted: November 7, 2012
• Duration: Minimum 2 years committment
• Informal inquiries can be sent to Serguei Pakhomov at spakh001@gmail.com

General Description The College of Pharamcy at the University of Minnesota is seeking a talented, pro-active and innovative individual for a Research Programmer position to work on several projects in Center for Clinical and Cognitive Neuropharmacology (C3N). C3N is engaged in conducting interdisciplinary research focused on cognitive effects of medications and neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease. Computerized assessment is used to measure these cognitive effects. The successful candidate for this position will be responsible for a variety of computer-related tasks including creating and maintaining innovative computer-based neuropsychological testing applications that involve spontaneous speech and language collection and analysis. The successful candidate will also be expected to interact with graduate and undergraduate students on specific programming and research projects to meet the needs of the Center.

Skills and characteristics

• Education: Master’s degree in computer science, electrical engineering, computational linguistics or equivalent combination of training and experience

• Required Skills: Excellent analytical, technical and problem-solving skills. Deep understanding and experience with audio and speech processing. Strong application programming skills in C/C++, Java, Python and/or Perl programming languages. Familiarity with speech recognition toolkits and APIs (e.g., HTK, Sphinx, KALDI, SRILM), acoustic analysis tools (e.g., Praat) and good understanding or experience with speech recognition and analysis technology.

• Preferred skills and characteristics: Familiarity with natural language processing (NLP) techniques and toolkits (e.g., NLTK). Experience with programming applications for mobile devices. Familiarity with computerized or paper-and-pencil neuropsychological testing.

• Other: The successful candidate will be a self-motivated and proactive individual, a good communicator interested in working in an academic environment. Participating in research and experimentation leading to scientific publication are not required but would be highly encouraged and supported.

If you are someone who has the necessary skills and thrives on working in an exciting and dynamic research environment, please send us a letter stating your interest and qualifications, and a resume. Please use this website to apply: https://employment.umn.edu/applicants/jsp/shared/position/JobDetails_css.jsp?postingId=576008.

One Postdoctoral Position In Statistical Machine Translation - Sapienza University of Rome (Italy)

• Employer: Sapienza University of Rome
• Location: Rome, Italy
• Deadline: 18th October 2012
• Date Posted: 01st October 2012
• Starting date: 1st December 2012
• Duration: 1+1 years
• Salary: 35000-50000 euros per annum, depending on qualifications. Note that this type of research contract is exempt from most taxes (e.g., 40000 euros per annum corresponds to around 2600 euros net per month)..
• Informal inquiries can be sent by email to Roberto Navigli (navigli@di.uniroma1.it).

One position of POSTDOCTORAL RESEARCH FELLOW in Natural Language Processing is open in the Department of Computer Science of the Sapienza University of Rome, with a specific focus on statistical machine translation for Asian languages. The position is part of a 5-year ERC Starting Grant on multilingual Word Sense Disambiguation funded by the European Research Council (ERC) and headed by Prof. Roberto Navigli (see http://lcl.uniroma1.it/multijedi for details). The successful candidate will participate in a frontier research project and will work in the stimulating environment of a leading and highly-active research team comprising 2 faculty members, 2 post-docs and 6 Ph.D. students.

REQUIREMENTS/QUALIFICATIONS

• Ph.D. in Computer Science, Natural Language Processing or Computational Linguistics.
• Strong publication record in Statistical Machine Translation. Publication record in lexical semantics is a plus.
• Willingness to coordinate and supervise part of the research work of the ERC project.
• Ability to work in a collaborative environment, with a strong commitment to achieving research goals.
• Fluent English. Proficiency in at least two major Asian languages. Knowledge of Italian is NOT a requirement.
• Solid programming skills.

HOW TO APPLY

Please send a detailed CV and contact details for up to three references to Roberto Navigli (navigli@di.uniroma1.it). Please include the job reference (LCL3-2012) in the subject line.

ABOUT LA SAPIENZA

The Sapienza University of Rome is a seven-century-old university in the heart of Rome. It is one of the largest universities in Europe, with around 150,000 students. Its Faculty of Information Engineering, Informatics and Statistics (that includes the Department of Computer Science) is one of the youngest, most energetic and scientifically active environments at the Sapienza. The Sapienza University is an equal opportunity employer.

ABOUT THE COMPUTER SCIENCE DEPARTMENT

The Department of Computer Science is a modern, well-equipped research institution with a top-class faculty and a strong Ph.D. program. The Department comprises 44 faculty members (among whom 3 ERC grant holders), 15 postdocs and around 30 Ph.D. students. The successful candidate will be based in Rome, one of the most beautiful cities in the world. The Department is situated just beside the main Sapienza University campus and is in easy walking distance of San Lorenzo, a nice lively area with lots of bookshop-cafes, bars and restaurants. Prospective candidates should not be afraid of the language barrier, as Italians are in general very friendly.

Postdoc or Research Associate - Natural Language Processing

• Employer: IHMC (www.ihmc.us)
• Rank or Title: Research Associate - Natural Language Processing
• Specialty: Computational Linguistics, Natural Language Processing, in particular dialogue processing
• Location: Ocala, FL
• Deadline: Applications accepted until position is filled
• Date Posted: September 26th, 2012
• Contact email ywilks@ihmc.us

About Us IHMC (www.ihmc.us) is a not-for-profit research institute of the Florida University System and is affiliated with several Florida universities. Researchers at IHMC pioneer technologies aimed at leveraging and extending human capabilities. These systems fit the human and machine components together in ways that exploit their respective strengths and mitigate their respective weaknesses. The design and fit of computational prostheses require a broader interdisciplinary range than is typically found in one organization, thus IHMC staff includes computer scientists, cognitive psychologists, neuroscientists, physicians, philosophers, engineers and social scientists of various stripes, as well as some researchers who resist all attempts to classify them. Current active research areas include: knowledge modeling and sharing, adjustable autonomy, robotics, advanced interfaces and displays, communication and collaboration, computer-mediated learning systems, intelligent data and language understanding, software agents, expertise studies, work practice simulation, knowledge representation, and other related areas. IHMC faculty and staff collaborate extensively with industry and government to develop science and technology that can be enabling with respect to society's broader goals. IHMC researchers receive funding (current funding in force exceeds $25,000,000) from a wide range of government and private sources. IHMC research partners have included: DARPA, NSF, NASA, Army, Navy, Air Force, NIH, DOT, IDEO, Nokia, Sun Microsystems, Microsoft, Boeing, Lockheed, and SAIC, among others.

The candidate will be appointed on a new project on dialogue processing, due to start in the coming months and run for one year initially, with extensions expected. The aim of the project is to produce a prototype conversational Companion-in-an-iPad for a brain-damaged patient in a domestic setting. Ocala, Florida is an excellent location, close to Florida’s major university and about an hour from both coasts. IHMC is housed in an excellent, state of the art building in the city center.

Required:

▪ Natural language processing / computational linguistics background. Ideal: dialogue applications experience (in NLP not ASR),

▪ Substantial skills in processing corpora. Ideal: Java skills and standard statistical procedures.

▪ Ph.D. in computational linguistics or some equivalent in terms of experience in natural language processing or related areas.

Skills and Experience:

▪ 3+ plus years experience in natural language processing / computational linguistics in industry or large scale academic research project.

▪ Expertise in at least some of the following specific NLP areas and topics: question answering, lexical semantics, collocations, disambiguation, multi-word expressions, (shallow) parsing, named entity recognition, lexical acquisition, RDF-style data, speech-language interfaces, information extraction, text classification, evaluation methodologies.

▪ Familiarity with existing data resources and tools: Wordnet, GATE, Nuance ASR, NLTK, Weka, and similar tools.

▪ Ideal: experience with ontologies, RDF, other semantic web resources or tools.

Apply to Yorick Wilks at: ywilks@ihmc.us

NLP Research Scientist - Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

NLP Research Scientist wanted for work impacting National Security Company: Pacific Northwest National Laboratory Job ID: 301731 http://www.jobs.pnnl.gov/ Location: PNNL - Richland, WA Contact: jill.schroeder@pnnl.gov

This position requires significant contributions to the development and evolvement of natural language processing research at PNNL. The incumbent will possess skills in both natural language processing and software design and development. Expertise in natural language processing should include one or more applications including, but not limited to, information extraction, knowledge base population, machine reading, sentiment analysis and social media analytics. Software development skills should include, but are not limited to, object oriented programming and development, data modeling, building demonstrable and functional prototypes, and contributing to deployment-ready software.

In carrying out these duties, the incumbent will be responsible for maintaining strategic alliances with specified clients, managing individual or small team assignments for multiple projects, performing assignments with minimal oversight, working effectively within interdisciplinary development teams, and contributing to proposals, publications and presentations.

Specific responsibilities include: - apply computational linguistics approaches and algorithms - contribute to the translation of client requests and needs into a set of project requirements and tasks - contribute to software design - construct functional applications and prototypes using PHP, Perl, Python and Java - perform algorithmic development and implementation, especially as they pertain to NLP - evaluate natural language processing methods and results - develop client server and database aware applications - design and implement graphical user interfaces - develop on Linux and Windows environments - effectively manage individual tasks, schedule, workload, budget, and deadlines - contribute to technical presentations and demonstrations of designs, prototypes and operational software to existing and potential clients; group, division, and sector managers - contribute to or lead efforts in publishing research - help grow the natural language processing business portfolio through proposal writing and client engagement

Responsibilities & Accountabilities:

This position reports to the Technical Group manager for Knowledge Discovery and Informatics within PNNL’s National Security Directorate, and is responsible for work activity as assigned by PNNL project managers for both internal and external clients. The incumbent is expected to develop knowledge of the goals of any projects to which they are assigned and the clients they support. The incumbent is expected to maintain a customer-service focus commensurate with this position.

The incumbent normally receives task instructions from their project managers, which are performed with minimal oversight. The incumbent will work both as task lead, and as a staff member under the direction of project managers and senior software scientists. The incumbent will be expected to attend regular project meetings and KDI group meetings. The incumbent may also be expected to attend offsite team meetings with other team members, clients, and users.

A level II scientist contributes to the completion of project milestones by leading specific tasks of the project to meet scope, schedule and budget. Level II scientists are contributing professionals who are building a professional reputation for their technical expertise in NLP. They are expected to continue to develop their technical expertise and knowledge, and develop new skills. In addition, strong contributions to the technical content of proposals will be made.

A level III scientist will lead small to moderate research projects, contribute to the completion of programs and projects, and mentor other staff members. Level III scientists will be skilled professionals able to apply existing NLP methods to new work and will maintain skills consistent with the state of the art in NLP. Level III scientists will generate ideas for new proposals and lead the development of technical content for small to medium proposals, and will contribute to scoping, scheduling and budgeting for projects. .

Minimum Requirements  
Level II: 

A Bachelor's degree with 2-3 years experience or a Master's degree with 0-2 years experience or a Ph.D. is required. Expected to contribute professionally, building a professional reputation for technical expertise. Fully applying and interpreting standard theories, principles, methods, tools and technologies. All staff at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory must be able to demonstrate the legal right to work in the United States.

Level III: A Bachelor's degree with at least 5 years experience or a Master's degree with 3 years experience or a Ph.D. with 1-2 years experience is required. Must be a skilled professional who applies a broad basis of existing theories, principles, and concepts to a specialty field. All staff at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory must be able to demonstrate the legal right to work in the United States.

Qualifications  
Professional Expertise: Expertise in NLP algorithm development and strong software design and development skills. 

Work-related Experience: - Demonstrated ability and willingness to perform as a team member on multiple projects simultaneously and work effectively in a fast-paced, dynamic team environment with high expectations for quality. - Experience leading project teams in research, design and development a plus.

Breadth of Relevant Specialized Knowledge and Skills: - Well-developed oral and written communication skills, including ability to convey complex technical information accurately. - Above-average client interaction skills including the ability to quickly understand a client’s business needs and communicate at the proper level of detail - Proficient in the use of Windows, Macintosh, and Linux environments

Preferred Education/Credential  
A PhD in computational linguistics is preferred. 

Level II: PhD in computational linguistics, natural language processing or related field within the last 5 years or Masters of Science in computer engineering, computer science or related field and 1+ years of experience in NLP within the last 5 years

Level III PREFERRED: PhD in computational linguistics, natural language processing or related field and 1-2 years of experience in NLP within the last 5 years or Masters of Science in computer engineering, computer science or related field and + years of experience in NLP within the last 5 years

Equal Employment Opportunity  
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) is an Affirmative Action / Equal Opportunity Employer and supports diversity in the workplace.  All employment decisions are made without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability, veteran status, marital or family status, sexual orientation, gender identity, or genetic information.  All staff at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory must be able to demonstrate the legal right to work in the United States.  
Other Information  
This position requires the ability to obtain a federal security clearance in a timely manner.  Which requires:  

• US Citizenship
• Background Investigation: Applicants selected will be subject to a Federal background investigation and must meet eligibility requirements for access to classified matter in accordance 10 CFR 710, Appendix B.
• Drug Testing: All Security Clearance (L or Q) positions will be considered by the Department of Energy to be Testing Designated Positions which means that they are subject to applicant, random, and for cause drug testing. In addition, applicants must be able to demonstrate non-use of illegal drugs for the 12 consecutive months preceding completion of the requisite Questionnaire for National Security Positions (QNSP).

Note: Applicants will be considered ineligible for security clearance processing by the U.S. Department of Energy until non-use of illegal drugs for 12 consecutive months can be demonstrated.

Faculty Positions (open rank) in multiple areas, particularly Biomedical NLP / Text Mining, The Ohio State University (Columbus, OH, USA)

• Employer: The Ohio State University, Dept. of Computer Science & Engineering and Dept. of Biomedical Informatics
• Rank or Title: Assistant, Associate, or Full Professor
• Specialty: Multiple openings, including targeted hire in Biomedical Natural Language Processing / Text Mining
• Location: Columbus, OH USA
• Deadline: Review of applications will begin in November and continue until the positions are filled
• Date Posted: August 30, 2012
• Contact email or link to website: http://www.cse.ohio-state.edu/department/positions.shtml

The Computer Science and Engineering Department at the Ohio State University seeks faculty candidates for multiple tenured or tenure-track appointments at the assistant, associate or full professor level. The department is slated for significant growth as part of a multi-year expansion in size and scope, including targeted faculty hires in core areas as well as in areas that bridge CS with other disciplines. The specific searches being conducted this year include:

• One targeted position, open rank, in the area of big data, broadly defined. These include, but are not limited to, applicants that have core training in databases, systems, data analytics, or cloud computing, with experience in managing and analyzing big data stores.
• One targeted position, open rank, in the area of cybersecurity, broadly defined. We are specifically interested in applicants with research interests in network security, physical layer/information theoretic security, cyberphysical systems, data privacy, cryptography, or programming language security.
• One targeted position, open rank, at the interface of computer science and mathematics broadly defined. We are specifically interested in researchers working in theoretical computer science, scientific computing, or complex systems.
• Multiple targeted positions, open rank, jointly searched with the Department of Biomedical Informatics. Priority consideration will be given to applicants whose research interests lie in the processing of biomedical text (e.g. NLP or text mining) as well as those interested in the multi-scale modeling and visualization of high-throughput and/or high-content molecular or image data. Outstanding applicants in other areas at the intersection of biology, clinical science, informatics, and computer science will also be considered.
• In addition to the above targeted searches the department is conducting a search for an additional position (open rank) that is open to all areas of computer science and engineering.

The department is committed to enhancing faculty diversity; women, minorities, and individuals with disabilities are especially encouraged to apply.

Applicants should hold or be completing a Ph.D. in CSE or a closely related field, have a commitment to and demonstrated record of excellence in research, and a commitment to excellence in teaching.

To apply, please submit your application via the online database. The link can be found at: https://www.cse.ohio-state.edu/cgi-bin/portal/fsearch/apply.cgi.

Review of applications will begin in November and will continue until the positions are filled.

The Ohio State University is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employer.

Postdoctoral Position in Natural Language Processing in Academia Sinica (Taipei, Taiwan)

• Employer: Institute of Information Science, Academia Sinica

http://www.sinica.edu.tw

http://www.iis.sinica.edu.tw

• PI: Lun-Wei Ku (Language Processing Group)

http://www.iis.sinica.edu.tw/pages/lwku/index_en.html

http://nlg18.csie.ntu.edu.tw:8080/lwku/lwku.html

• Rank or Title: Post Doctorial Researcher - Natural Language Processing
• Specialty: Computational Linguistics, Natural Language Processing, Information Retrieval, Machine Learning
• Location: Taipei, Taiwan
• Deadline: open until filled
• Date Posted: August 21st, 2012
• Start Date: before October, 2012 or after April, 2013
• Duration: 1+1+1 years
• Contact email: lwku@iis.sinica.edu.tw

REQUIRED

Ph.D. in computational linguistics / natural language processing or related areas.

Natural language processing / computational linguistics background. Substantial skills in programming and processing large scale corpora.

Ideal: Java skills and standard statistical procedures.

SKILLS AND EXPERIENCE

3+ plus years experience in natural language processing / computational linguistics in industry or large scale academic research project. Expertise in at least some of the following specific NLP areas and topics: question answering, lexical semantics, collocations, terminology extraction, disambiguation, multi-word expressions, (shallow) parsing, named entity recognition, lexical acquisition, paraphrasis acquisition, information extraction, text classification, evaluation methodologies, sentiment analysis. Familiarity with existing data resources and tools: Wordnet, POS taggers, parsers, SVMLight, Weka, and similar tools.

Ideal: with experience of interests in processing Asia language (ex. Chinese)

PAYMENT

Around 1900~2000 USD/Month, depends on the currency rate.

HOW TO APPLY

Apply to Lun-Wei Ku at: lwku@iis.sinica.edu.tw. Please provide your CV, publication list and contact information.

Please also note the date you wish to start the job, and send your documents at your earliest convenience so we can review them asap.

Two Postdoctoral Positions in Natural Language Processing at the Sapienza University of Rome

• Employer: Sapienza University of Rome
• Location: Rome, Italy
• Deadline: open until filled
• Date Posted: 16th August 2012
• Starting date: fall/winter 2012
• Duration: 1+1+1 years
• Salary: 30000-45000 euros per annum, depending on qualifications. Note that this type of research contract is exempt from most taxes (e.g., 40000 euros per annum corresponds to around 2600 euros net per month).
• Informal inquiries can be sent by email to Roberto Navigli (navigli@di.uniroma1.it).

Two positions of POSTDOCTORAL RESEARCH FELLOW in Natural Language Processing are open in the Department of Computer Science of the Sapienza University of Rome. The positions are part of a 5-year ERC Starting Grant funded by the European Research Council (ERC) and headed by Prof. Roberto Navigli (see http://lcl.uniroma1.it/multijedi for details). The successful candidates will participate in a frontier research project on multilingual lexical semantics and will work in a stimulating environment of a leading and highly-active research team including 2 faculty members, 1 postdoc and 6 Ph.D. students.

REQUIREMENTS/QUALIFICATIONS

• Ph.D. in Computer Science, Natural Language Processing or Computational Linguistics.
• Strong publication record in Computational Linguistics/Natural Language Processing (see below).
• Willingness to coordinate and supervise part of the research work of the ERC project.
• Ability to work in a collaborative environment, with a strong commitment to achieving research goals.
• Fluent English. Knowledge of Italian is NOT a requirement.
• Solid programming skills: Java and practical expertise with standard NLP tools are required, knowledge of Perl/Python is a plus.

Experience in research project management is a plus.

SPECIFIC REQUIREMENTS

• POSITION #1 (LCL1-2012): research record in computational lexical semantics, large-scale knowledge acquisition and validation, open information extraction, or data-intensive machine learning
• POSITION #2 (LCL2-2012): research record in statistical machine translation, unsupervised acquisition of bilingual/multilingual lexicons, or cross-lingual methods for NLP

HOW TO APPLY

Please send a detailed CV and contact details for up to three references to Roberto Navigli (navigli@di.uniroma1.it). Please include the job reference (LCL1-2012 or LCL2-2012) in the subject line.

ABOUT SAPIENZA

The University of Rome "La Sapienza" is a seven-century-old university in the heart of Rome. It is one of the largest universities in Europe, with around 150,000 students. Its Faculty of Information Engineering, Informatics and Statistics (that includes the Department of Computer Science) is one of the youngest, most energetic and scientifically active environments at Sapienza. The Sapienza University is an equal opportunity employer.

ABOUT THE COMPUTER SCIENCE DEPARTMENT

The Department of Computer Science is a modern and well-equipped research institution with a top-class faculty and a strong Ph.D. program. The Department comprises 44 faculty members (among whom 3 ERC grant holders), 15 postdocs and around 30 Ph.D. students. The successful candidate will be based in Rome, one of the most beautiful cities in the world. The Department is situated in a nice lively area with lots of cafes, bars, restaurants, and at walking distance from the city centre. Prominent candidates must not be afraid of the language barrier, as Italians are in general very friendly.

Engineer with NLP / ML/ IR background - Curata (Cambridge, MA)

Curata, Inc. Curata, Inc. provides easy-to-use marketing solutions for content curation and content marketing. Curata's product, Curata, allows marketers to easily find, organize and share content on specific issues or topics in order to establish thought leadership, own industry conversations and drive qualified web traffic. Curata was founded in 2007 and is headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts. For more information, visit www.curata.com.

Role Description We are looking for an individual who enjoys building and shipping code as an engineer, first and foremost, but also enjoys prototyping new product ideas leveraging natural language processing, information retrieval, and machine learning skills. You are a fit if you enjoy experimenting with a large text corpus, innovating new product concepts, and ultimately packaging and shipping your work.

In the past two years, our customer base, comprising of marketing, information services, and knowledge management professionals, have curated millions of pieces of content through our complex content procurement and processing pipeline. We release new code many times a day, and have fun continually optimizing and enhancing our product. As a start-up, we need someone who can match the high energy and enthusiasm of our team.

Technologies in our stack include Linux, Django, Python, git, MySQL, jQuery, Sphinx, and memcached.

Responsibilities

• Prototyping concepts and working with engineering team to see them through deployment.
• Suggesting new product concepts.
• Optimizing machine learning algorithms through iterative experimentation and parameter tuning.
• Architect, build and maintain flexible and highly scalable web applications
• Participate in the full engineering life cycle from design through implementation and deployment.
• Think in terms of the end-user and design accordingly
• Actively contribute to product design and feature selection discussions

Preferred Skills and Experience

• Significant research experience with natural language processing (NLP), information retrieval, machine learning or related fields.
• Strong software development skills, preferably with web applications.
• Versatile attitude towards technology -- ready and willing to learn and grow on the job.

Location: Kendall Square, Cambridge, MA / Boston

Type: Full-Time

Contact: engmgt.jobs@curata.com

Research Fellowship at University of Aberdeen

• Employer: University of Aberdeen
• Job Title: Research Fellow in Natural Language Generation
• Location: Aberdeen, UK
• Deadline: 23rd July 2012
• Date Posted: 11th July 2012
• [http://www.abdn.ac.uk/jobs/index.php Application Website: click on "external applicants", search for the post with reference number 1260664
• Contact email: c.mellish@abdn.ac.uk

To support our ambitious research programme we are looking to appoint a postdoctoral research fellow to do research on natural language generation in the MIME project. MIME (see http://www.dotrural.ac.uk/mime/ ) investigates ways to underpin reconfigured rural emergency response services, by examining how technology could support responders to incidents such as road accidents. It is exploring the use of networked monitors to support decision making and information management in the management of casualties and the automatic generation of handover reports from responders when more expert help arrives. The successful candidate will have a good knowledge of natural language processing techniques in general (at the postgraduate level) and preferably some practical experience with NLG. The candidate will have a PhD or be about to complete a PhD in Computer Science/ Artificial Intelligence or a relevant discipline. Enthusiasm for digital technology and innovation relevant to society and the economy is essential as is the ability to work in a cross-disciplinary team including colleagues in computer science and engineering.

This post is funded by the EPSRC and it is anticipated that the project activities will be completed within 9 months of the agreed start date. This appointment will be made subject to the usual terms and conditions of employment of the University.

Executive Director at University of Maryland

• • Employer: University of Maryland, Center for Advanced Study of Language (CASL)
  • Title: Executive Director
  • Location: College Park, MD
  • Deadline: Open until filled
  • Date Posted: July 2, 2012
  • Link to website: http://jobs.umd.edu/applicants/Central?quickFind=57086
  • Contact email: tswallst@umd.edu

The University of Maryland, College Park, invites applications for the position of Executive Director of the Center for Advanced Study of Language (CASL). Since its establishment in 2003, CASL’s mission has been to conduct cutting-edge research that results in improved performance on foreign language and analysis tasks relevant to the work of government language professionals. Visit www.casl.umd.edu for more information about CASL.

DUTIES: The Executive Director (ED) has leadership responsibility for research, operations, strategic planning, and compliance with university and government requirements and regulations associated with CASL’s designation as a University Affiliated Research Center (UARC). The ED’s duties include developing and implementing the US Government-approved research agenda; developing and managing external relations and outreach to academia, industry, and government for purposes of collaborative research and consultation; and overseeing relevant UARC-designated activities and outreach, collaboration, education, policy and evaluation. The ED ensures the hiring and retention of the best researchers and research managers in CASL’s core compentencies and other relevant disciplines as well as highly qualified financial, information technology, operations, logistics, and security support staff. In addition to aligning CASL’s strategic plan with its mission to meet the needs of clients, the ED provides leadership in identifying opportunities for partnering and collaborating with academic departments and other research centers on campus. The ED reports to the Vice President for Research and directly supervises the directors of CASL’s various units.

QUALIFICATIONS: Candidates must have an advanced degree, preferably a Ph.D., in a discipline related to one of CASL’s core competencies (e.g., Less Commonly Taught Languages and Cultures; Second Language Acquisition; Computational Linguistics; Linguistics; Cognitive or Social Psychology; Cognitive Science or Cognitive Neuroscience), with a distinguished record of scholarly achievement and/or leadership in one or more areas relevant to the research foci of the center. Candidates' experience, research and publications should show evidence of ability to tackle complex, interdisciplinary research and to work collaboratively with a range of institutions and researchers. Experience working closely with US government and/or industry colleagues in non-academic settings is essential. Candidates must qualify for an academic appointment either as a tenured professor or as a professor of the practice in a department consistent with their background.

Candidates must hold U.S. citizenship and be willing to obtain the appropriate security clearance.

TO APPLY: For best consideration, applicants should submit a letter of application, CV, and contact information for three professional references online at http://jobs.umd.edu click on “Faculty” (or direct link: http://www. jobs.umd.edu/applicants/Central?quickFind=57086) by Monday, August 20, 2012. Address questions to the search committee chair, Professor Thomas S. Wallsten, at tswallst@umd.edu

The University of Maryland, College Park, actively subscribes to a policy of equal employment opportunity, and will not discriminate against any employee or applicant because of race, age, sex, color, sexual orientation, physical or mental disability, religion, ancestry or national origin, marital status, genetic information, or political affiliation. Minorities and women are encouraged to apply. The University of Maryland offers an excellent benefits package which includes: health benefits, retirement plans, generous leave package, flexible spending accounts, tuition remission, and long-term, disability, and life insurance. Please visit the University’s web page at http://www.uhr.umd.edu/benefits/ to see a full list of benefits and the providers.

Several Positions in Data2Text (Natural Language Generation)

• Employer: Data2Text
• Job title: Natural Language Generation Engineer, Analytics Engineer, Lead Engineer
• Specialty: natural language generation, analytics
• Location: Aberdeen, Scotland, UK
• Deadline: 29 June 2012
• Date posted: 8 June 2012
• Link to website: http://www.data2text.com/careers

Data2Text is a spinout from the University of Aberdeen's Natural Language Generation (NLG) research group. We are looking to hire several people; please see our website for details http://www.data2text.com/careers

This is a great opportunity for people who are keen on getting NLG technology out into the real world. In addition to the advertised positions, we're happy to talk to people who are knowledgeable about NLG and keen to develop commercial applications, but whose profiles do not fit the advertised positions.

Information inquiries (from the ACL community) should be sent to Ehud Reiter (e.reiter@abdn.ac.uk or ehud.reiter@data2text.com)

Associate Research Scientist (SPEECH) at Educational Testing Service

• Employer: Educational Testing Service (www.ets.org)
• Job Title: Associate Research Scientist (SPEECH)
• Location: Princeton, NJ
• Deadline: Open until filled
• Date Posted: 16-May-2012
• Application Website
• Contact email: dyanchuk@ets.org

JOB DESCRIPTION

ETS's Research & Development division has an opening for a Speech research scientist in the NLP and Speech group. The Group currently consists of about 15 Ph.D. level research scientists in areas related to NLP and speech. Its main focus is on foundational research as well as on development of new capabilities to automatically score written and spoken test responses in a wide range of ETS test programs including TOEFL(R)iBT and GRE(R).

BASIC FUNCTIONS AND RESPONSIBILITIES

• Provide scientific and technical skills in conceptualizing, designing, obtaining support for, conducting, managing, and disseminating results of research projects in the field of speech technology, or portions of large-scale research studies or programs in the same field.

• Develop and/or modify NLP theories to conceptualize and implement new capabilities in automated scoring and NLP systems to improve assessments, learning tools and test development practices.

• Apply scientific, technical and software engineering skills in designing and conducting research studies and capability development in support of educational products and services.

• Develop and oversee the conduct of selected portions of research proposals and project budgets.

• Design and conduct complex scientific studies functioning as an expert in major facets of the projects.

• Assist in the conduct of research projects by accomplishing directed tasks according to schedule and within budget.

• Participate in dissemination activities through the publications of research papers, progress and technical reports, the presentation of seminars or other appropriate communication vehicles.

• Develop professional relationships as a representative, consultant or advisor to external advisory and policy boards and councils, research organizations, educational institutions and educators.

EXPERIENCE AND SKILLS

EDUCATION

Ph.D. in Language Technologies, Natural Language Processing, Computer Science or Electrical Engineering, with strong emphasis on speech technology and preferably some education in linguistics is required.

EXPERIENCE

Evidence of substantive research experience and/or experience in developing and deploying speech capabilities is required. Demonstrable contributions to new and/or modified theories of speech processing and their implementation in automated systems. Demonstrable expertise in the application of speech recognition systems and fluency in at least one major programming language (e.g., Java, Perl, C/C++, Python).

APPLYING

Interested parties can apply for the position through the following website:

http://ets.pereless.com/careers/index.cfm?fuseaction=83080.viewjobdetail&CID=83080&JID=124337&type=True&cfcend

If there are any questions, please contact: Dave Yanchuk (609) 406-5291 dyanchuk@ets.org

Associate Research Scientist (NLP) at Educational Testing Service

• Employer: Educational Testing Service (www.ets.org)
• Job Title: Associate Research Scientist (NLP)
• Location: Princeton, NJ
• Deadline: Open until filled
• Date Posted: 16-May-2012
• Application Website
• Contact email: dyanchuk@ets.org

JOB DESCRIPTION

ETS's Research & Development division has an opening for an NLP research scientist in the NLP and Speech group. The Group currently consists of about 15 Ph.D. level research scientists in areas related to NLP and speech. Its main focus is on foundational research as well as on development of new capabilities to automatically score written and spoken test responses in a wide range of ETS test programs including TOEFL(R)iBT and GRE(R).

BASIC FUNCTIONS AND RESPONSIBILITIES

• Provide scientific and technical skills in conceptualizing, designing, obtaining support for, conducting, managing, and disseminating results of research projects in the field of Natural Language Processing (NLP), or portions of large-scale research studies or programs in the same field.

• Develop and/or modify NLP theories to conceptualize and implement new capabilities in automated scoring and NLP systems to improve assessments, learning tools and test development practices.

• Apply scientific, technical and software engineering skills in designing and conducting research studies and capability development in support of educational products and services.

• Develop and oversee the conduct of selected portions of research proposals and project budgets.

• Design and conduct complex scientific studies functioning as an expert in major facets of the projects.

• Assist in the conduct of research projects by accomplishing directed tasks according to schedule and within budget.

• Participate in dissemination activities through the publications of research papers, progress and technical reports, the presentation of seminars or other appropriate communication vehicles.

• Develop professional relationships as a representative, consultant or advisor to external advisory and policy boards and councils, research organizations, educational institutions and educators.

EXPERIENCE AND SKILLS

EDUCATION

Ph.D. in Natural Language Processing, Computational Linguistics, Computer Science or Electrical Engineering, with strong emphasis on NLP technology and preferably some education in linguistics is required.

EXPERIENCE

Evidence of substantive research experience and/or experience in developing and deploying NLP capabilities is required. Demonstrable contributions to new and/or modified theories of NLP and their implementation in automated systems are required. Demonstrable and practical expertise with NLP tools and fluency in at least one major programming language (e.g. java, perl, c/c++, python) is also required. Familiarity with the application of NLP tools to educational problems, and a very strong statistical background and a solid experience with machine learning algorithms would be an asset.

APPLYING

Interested parties can apply for the position through the following website:

http://ets.pereless.com/careers/index.cfm?fuseaction=83080.viewjobdetail&CID=83080&JID=124335&type=True&cfcend

If there are any questions, please contact: Dave Yanchuk (609) 406-5291 dyanchuk@ets.org

Associate Research Engineer at Educational Testing Service

• Employer: Educational Testing Service (www.ets.org)
• Job Title: Associate Research Engineer
• Location: Princeton, NJ
• Deadline: Open until filled
• Date Posted: 15-May-2012
• Application Website
• Contact email: dyanchuk@ets.org

JOB DESCRIPTION

ETS's Research & Development division has an opening for a researcher in the NLP & Speech Group. The Group currently consists of about 15 Ph.D. level research scientists in areas related to NLP and speech. Its main focus is on foundational research as well as on development of new capabilities to automatically score written and spoken test responses in a wide range of ETS test programs including TOEFL(R)iBT and GRE(R).

BASIC FUNCTIONS AND RESPONSIBILITIES

• Assist in the implementation of speech technology and natural language processing (NLP) components of medium- to large-scale, complex research projects for ETS researchers, testing program areas, and external clients. Consult with research scientists in the application, modification, and documentation of such systems using established technologies.

• Work effectively in a team setting and take an active role in contributing to team discussions and decisions.

• Analyze, design, modify, develop, document and implement technologies for executing medium- to large-scale, complex Speech technology and NLP research and development tasks. Identify unexpected problems in the application of Speech and NLP tools, and develop solutions.

• Consult with research supervisory staff on the development of technologies for executing medium- to large-scale, complex Speech technology and NLP research and development tasks. Contribute to the implementation and support of new Speech and NLP methodologies to support research system development.

• Assist in the preparation of NLP development components of proposals and cost/resource estimates.

• Maintain continuing awareness of recent advances in speech and natural language processing, machine learning, and software development methodologies.

• Implement components of technical documentation of NLP software systems, solutions and results.

• Attend area-wide staff training and development sessions.

EXPERIENCE AND SKILLS

EDUCATION

A Masters degree in Computer Science, NLP, Language Technology, Computational Linguistics, Linguistics or a closely related field is required.

EXPERIENCE

A strong programming background, in languages such as Java, Python, Perl, and C, and facility with computational algorithms are essential. Coursework in statistics and experience in using machine learning toolkits are highly desirable. Experience with speech processing software (e.g. HTK, Praat, Matlab) is desirable.

OTHER REQUIREMENTS

• Knowledge of UNIX and Windows computing environments.

• Familiarity with UNIX tools and scripting languages.

• Familiarity with algorithms, methods and data structures in common use in the processing of speech and language data.

• Excellent verbal and written communication skills.

APPLYING

Interested parties can apply for the position through the following website:

http://ets.pereless.com/careers/index.cfm?fuseaction=83080.viewjobdetail&CID=83080&JID=124339&type=True&cfcend

If there are any questions, please contact: Dave Yanchuk (609) 406-5291 dyanchuk@ets.org

Junior Researcher at Austrian Research Institute for Artificial Intelligence (OFAI)

• Employer: Austrian Research Institute for Artificial Intelligence
• Group: Language Technology
• Title: Junior Researcher
• Requirements:
  • Permission to work within the European union
  • Excellent English language skills; knowledge of the German language is a plus
  • A degree in computational linguistics, computer science, or a related area (PhD is a plus, but experienced graduate students will be considered)
  • Experience in statistical natural language processing (knowledge of unsupervised machine learning is a plus)
  • Programming skills in C++, Perl and/or Java
  • Strong ability to work independently and drive an original research agenda
• Deadline: June 15, 2012
• Date Posted: May 14, 2012
• Contact: harald.trost@ofai.at

The Language Technology group at the OFAI, Vienna, is looking for a motivated post-doctoral researcher or a well experienced graduate student to fill a research position within the basic research project "Machine Learning Techniques for Modeling of Language Varieties".

The position involves basic research on issues related to data sparsity in machine translation between non-central language pairs. In particular, morphological closeness shall be exploited and bootstrapping methods shall be employed to counter the data sparsity. Further information is available at http://varieties.ofai.at.

A basic gross salary of EUR 40,000-45,000 per anno will be offered depending on the experience of the candidate.

OFAI encourages its researchers to publish results in the top venues (ACL, EMNLP, etc.) and provides travel funding towards this end.

Please send your applications, including a CV and a brief research statement, to Harald Trost <harald.trost@ofai.at>. The position is to be filled as soon as possible, not later than September 1st, 2012, and will terminate with the end of the project (December 31st, 2013).

About the Austrian Research Institute for Artificial Intelligence (OFAI): Founded in 1984, OFAI is one of Europe's leading non-profit research institutions in AI. Further information is available at http://www.ofai.at.

About Vienna: Vienna is the Austrian capital and consistently ranked as one of the most livable cities in the world. At over 1,600,000 inhabitants, Vienna is one of the largest cities in the central European region and home to numerous universities and research institutions, providing an intellectually stimulating environment.

Junior Research Group Leaders at Saarland University

• Employer: Saarland University, Germany
• Division: MMCI Cluster of Excellence
• Title: Junior Research Group Leaders
• Job ID: W490
• Specialty: Multimodal Computing and Interaction (incl. Speech and Language Processing)
• Location: Saarbrücken, Germany
• Deadline: April 30, 2012
• Date Posted: April 4, 2012
• Contact: http://www.uni-saarland.de/fileadmin/user_upload/Campus/Service/Stellenausschreibung/Wissenschaftliches_Personal/W490.pdf

The Cluster of Excellence "Multimodal Computing and Interaction" at Saarland University, Saarbrücken, Germany, seeks applications for a number of new Junior Research Group Leader positions. The Cluster provides a highly interdisciplinary research environment with a strong Computational Linguistics component. One of the Cluster's central research areas is 'Speech and Language Processing'. Group leaders will receive junior faculty status at Saarland University, including the right to supervise Bachelor, Master and PhD students. Junior research groups are equipped with a budget of 80k to 100k Euros per year to cover research personnel and other costs.

Deadline for applications is April 30th, 2012.

For the complete announcement see: http://www.uni-saarland.de/fileadmin/user_upload/Campus/Service/Stellenausschreibung/Wissenschaftliches_Personal/W490.pdf

Additional information on the excellence cluster is available on http://www.mmci.uni-saarland.de/

Please feel free to contact for further information any of the PIs (Matthew Crocker, Manfred Pinkal, Hans Uszkoreit) or JRG leaders (Vera Demberg, Caroline Sporleder, Ivan Titov) in the research area.

Scientist Position in Statistical Machine Translation at Microsoft

• Employer: MICROSOFT
• Division: Online Services Division
• Title: Scientist Position
• Job ID: 789594
• Specialty: Statistical Machine Translation
• Location: Bellevue, WA or Mountain Vew, CA
• Deadline: As soon as possible
• Date Posted: March 30, 2012
• Contact: https://careers.microsoft.com/jobdetails.aspx?ss=&pg=0&so=&rw=1&jid=77908&jlang=EN

Scientist Position in Statistical Machine Translation

Research and Development Opportunities for Next Generation Technology at Microsoft

Do you want to impact billions of people all over the world with speech technology that you create?

We are looking for PhD level scientists and senior scientists, who will work on research and development problems in statistical machine translation. The candidates with experience in large-scale syntax-based statistical machine translation, weighted finite state transducers, natural language processing and machine learning will be preferred.

Microsoft is all-in on the Natural User Interface to bring computing to larger audiences in more applications. To drive this mission we are bringing together scientists and engineers in the areas of machine translation, speech recognition, natural language understanding, dialog modeling, machine learning and synthesis to develop and deliver robust, natural and scalable solutions across a rich set of scenarios and languages.

Join the excitement to be part of the newly formed team of scientists within Microsoft and to impact the lives of billions of people all over the world. We are talking about Bing, Windows, XBOX, Mobile, Exchange Server and Tellme, just to name a few. Microsoft is dedicated to improving everyday life using speech. And not just in a few countries - but around the world.

Reasoning about Agent's Mental States in Dialog and Joint Activity (CMU Silicon Valley)

• Employer: Inst. for the Study of Learning and Expertise at CMU Silicon Valley
• Title: Post MS, Post Doc, or above
• Specialty: Logic, Reasoning (Abduction/Inference), Production systems, Discourse processes, Reasoning
• Location: Mountain Vew, CA
• Deadline: As soon as possible
• Date Posted: March 21, 2012
• Contact: patrick.w.langley@gmail.com

An ongoing project has an opening for a researcher who will help extend Icarus, a cognitive architecture, to reason about other agents' mental states in the context of dialogues and joint activities. The framework uses a logical formalism to encode knowledge, beliefs, and goals, and it relies on a form of abduction to make plausible inferences. Experience in building reasoning systems that operate over rich representations is essential, and a background in applied logic, knowledge-based systems, and/or cognitive architectures is highly desirable.

The location of the project will be Carnegie Mellon's Silicon Valley Campus. The start date is negotiable, but the position will be available on May 1, 2012, and the project has funding for another two years. Interested parties should send their curriculum vitae, along with the contact details for two or more references, to Pat Langley <patrick.w.langley@gmail.com>.

Post-doctoral researcher in metaphor detection and analysis at Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, IL

• Employer: Illinois Institute of Technology
• Title: Postdoc
• Specialty: Computational Linguistics, Natural Language Processing, Metaphor
• Location: Chicago, IL
• Deadline: As soon as possible
• Date Posted: March 13, 2012
• Contact: argamon@iit.edu

The Illinois Institute of Technology Department of Computer Science in Chicago, IL is delighted to announce an opening for a Postdoctoral Research Associate, for a recent Ph.D. in computer science, computational linguistics, or related areas. We seek applicants to work with Prof. Shlomo Argamon in the Linguistic Cognition Laboratory, the PI of a federally-funded project to identify and analyze metaphors in multiple languages.

The ideal candidate will have a scholarly understanding of computational linguistics and metaphor, be an excellent programmer, and be comfortable with technologies for the analysis of big data. The postdoc will: (a) support development of automated language analysis and text mining for metaphor identification and analysis, (b) help manage the work of graduate research assistants on the project, (c) aid in developing research publications and external funding proposals, and (d) support other research and administration activities in the project.

Applicants from all areas relevant to the research are encouraged to apply. In addition to the core area of computational linguistics, training in machine learning, statistical analysis, and information retrieval will be helpful. Knowledge of Spanish, Russian, or Farsi is also a plus.

The position includes a competitive salary plus benefits. It will run through the end of 2012, beginning as soon as possible, with the possibility of a one-year renewal upon satisfactory performance and continued funding.

Interested candidates should apply via email to Dr. Shlomo Argamon (argamon@iit.edu). Applications should include a CV with cover letter, including the names of three references, giving contact information (email address and phone number) and relationship to the candidate for each reference. Inquiries can similarly be directed to the above email address. Prior to hiring, successful applicants will be required to submit either a transcript/diploma showing the date of an earned Ph.D. degree or a letter from their academic adviser confirming the expectation of the degree by May 2012.

Review of applications will begin immediately and continue until the position is filled.

Post-doctoral position within the area of automatic text summarization at Google Zurich, Switzerland

• Employer: Google
• Job title: Postdoc
• Specialty: Natural Language Processing, Machine Learning, summarization
• Location: Zurich, Switzerland
• Deadline: we are looking to fill the position soon
• Date posted: 1 March 2012

A post-doctoral position in the area of automatic text summarization within the RENDER project is available at the Google Switzerland R&D office. RENDER is a EU FP7 research project focused on identifying diversity of opinions, viewpoints, mindsets and backgrounds in texts from different sources: news, (micro) blog streams, and in collaboratively written resources like Wikipedia. More information on the project goals is available at http://render-project.eu/.

The duration of the post-doctoral contract will be one year, with the possibility of renewing for a second year. This position will allow the candidate to perform research on several NLP-related areas, to interact with the consortium partners and with other Google-internal research and development projects, and to apply the results of the research to real applications with a potentially large impact.

Requirements:

• The candidate should have a Ph.D. in Computational Linguistics or Information Retrieval. Experience with automatic text summarization, machine learning or opinion mining is a plus.
• Extensive programming experience in C/C++.
• A solid foundation in computer science, with strong competencies in data structures, algorithms, and software design.
• Fluency in English.

Responsibilities:

• Perform research in the context of the project (text summarization).
• Develop prototypes quickly, and implement industrial-strength production-quality high-volume applications.
• Publish the result of the research in top conferences or journals.
• Be available to attend project meetings with the partners in the project.

For applying to this position, please send an e-mail to Enrique Alfonseca (ealfonseca@google.com) including a paragraph on why you think you are a right person for the role, and a brief CV.

4 PhD positions in spoken dialogue systems research

• Employer: Institute of Formal and Applied Linguistics, Charles University in Prague
• Job title: 4 PhD positions in spoken dialogue systems research
• Specialty: spoken dialogue systems, machine learning, Bayesian methods, and natural language processing
• Location: Prague, Czech Republic
• Deadline: 1 June 2012
• Date posted: 16 February 2012
• Link to website: http://ufal.mff.cuni.cz/~jurcicek/jobs

Applications are invited for 4 PhD fellowships in the area of statistical spoken dialogue systems funded by the Czech Government. The students will join the Institute of Formal and Applied Linguistics, Charles University in Prague, Czech Republic with an anticipated start date of October 1st, 2012.

Topic description: In recent years, it has been suggested that statistical approach to spoken dialogue system offer a framework to naturally handle inherent uncertainty in the human speech. The two main advantages of statistical methods are increased robustness in noisy conditions and more natural behaviour learned from data. However, the current methods need large corpora effectively preventing these methods to be used for complex dialogue systems occurring in real-life. The successful PhD candidates will investigate and implement statistical models and methods with the aim of increasing the efficiency of the learning process and reducing the need for large corpora. The conducted research will cover areas of spoken language understanding, dialogue management, and natural language processing.

Skills: Candidates should hold a master degree in a relevant area, such as computer science, mathematics, engineering or linguistics. A strong mathematical background, excellent programming skills (e.g. C/C++, Java, MATLAB, and various scripting languages under Linux environment), aptitude for creative research and autonomy are expected. Experience in machine learning, Bayesian methods, and natural language processing is a plus.

The Institute of Formal and Applied Linguistics is a top-level research group working in the area of computational linguistics and natural language processing. During the fellowship, there will be good opportunities to attend international conferences and workshops. The formal applications should be submitted before June 1. Prospective candidates are strongly encouraged to contact Dr Filip Jurcicek (jurcicek@ufal.mff.cuni.cz) as soon as possible to obtain details about the application process, the institute, and the research opportunities. Additional information is available at http://ufal.mff.cuni.cz/~jurcicek/jobs.

PhD-position in sentiment mining and reputation analysis

• Employer: Erasmus University Rotterdam
• Job title: PhD-student
• Specialty: text mining, sentiment analysis, topic detection, reputation management
• Location: Rottterdam, The Netherlands
• Deadline: 1 March 2012
• Date posted: 6 February 2012
• Link to website: http://www.eur.nl/erasmusstudio/about_erasmus_studio/open_positions

In the context of the COMMIT project Information Retrieval for Information Services (COMMIT/Infiniti http://www.project-infiniti.nl/), applications are invited for a PhD student position. The research task will be to investigate the Mining of Economic Entities. As currently people easily share their sentiment regarding companies and products, reputation modeling has become increasingly important for commercial and non-commercial organisations. Due to the huge amount of opinions available through the Web, a manual approach for social media analysis for sentiment mining seems unfeasible, while there seems to be a huge potential for content-driven automated approaches. Through the mining of economic entities and the aggregated sentiment based on textual data, the aim is to support decisions on, e.g., product developments, marketing campaigns, etc. The envisaged prototype for a decision support tool will act as an indicator of public sentiment and trends. In addition, the variation in the dynamics of opinion forming for diverging domains such as economic news, political sentiment, and sentiment towards historical events will be studied. The PhD track is embedded in the work of the EUR team working on the Infiniti project (Erasmus School of Economics/Econometric Institute/ Computer Science Group and Erasmus Studio) and the student will be able to collaborate on related topics with PhD students and researchers from other organizations participating in COMMIT.

For more information please visit this link: http://www.eur.nl/erasmusstudio/about_erasmus_studio/open_positions

To apply, send an email with the required documents (cv, motivation, relevant certificates and the names of two referees) to commit.eur@gmail.com.

PhD-position in folktale classification and clustering

• Employer: University of Twente
• Job title: PhD-student
• Specialty: text classification, document clustering, natural language processing
• Location: Amsterdam, The Netherlands / Enschede, The Netherlands
• Deadline: 4 March 2012
• Date posted: 6 February 2012
• Link to website: http://www.utwente.nl/vacatures/?VacatureID=199425

Applications are invited for a PhD-student in the FACT project (Folktales As Classifiable Texts), funded under the CATCH programme of the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO). This is a multidisciplinary research project involving collaboration between computer science and humanities researchers. The PhD-student will work on automatic classification of Dutch folktales by their international folktale type and on unsupervised clustering of folktales, to provide new input for humanities research. For this position, familiarity with the Dutch language is a plus.

The PhD-student will be employed at the University of Twente, but will spend most of his/her time "on site" at the Meertens Institute in Amsterdam (http://www.meertens.knaw.nl), which maintains a large collection of Dutch folktales (http://www.verhalenbank.nl). The PhD-student will be part of a larger team within the e-Laboratory on Oral Culture at the Meertens Institute.

For more information and the application form, visit this link: http://www.utwente.nl/vacatures/?VacatureID=199425

Research Associate Position at Educational Testing Service

• Employer: Educational Testing Service (www.ets.org)
• Job Title: Research Associate
• Location: Princeton, NJ
• Deadline: Open until filled
• Date Posted: 28-Jan-2012
• Application Website
• Contact email: dyanchuk@ets.org

JOB DESCRIPTION

Educational Testing Service has an opening for a Research Associate position in the Research Coordination and Support Group. The successful candidate will primarily provide support to Research Scientists working on a branch of computer science and computational linguistics known as Natural Language Processing (NLP) by assisting in the management of resources across numerous projects, leading communication efforts both internally and externally, and participating in all phases of research projects, including research design, project management, data collection and analysis. He or she will also collaborate with researchers in responding to external requests for information, external grant applications, and in preparing study results for publication or presentation.

BASIC FUNCTIONS AND RESPONSIBILITIES

• Provide full professional support to and collaborate with a Director of Research; Senior Research Scientists; and Research Scientists.

• Participate in planning, management, and design of research. Serve as co-investigator in research areas; collaborate on research projects.

• Plan and manage annotations for a variety of projects.

• Design and develop plans for data collection; oversee data collection, reduction, and analysis; evaluate availability and usefulness of data; identify and collect additional data necessary for completing research projects.

• Monitor collection and quality of data; provide comprehensive review of data collected from field sites to ensure completeness and accuracy; oversee entry of data for computer analysis.

• Design original research instruments and methods and applications of research.

• Write, rewrite, and edit proposals, professional reports, research instruments, books (or sections thereof), speeches, handbooks, research articles, and correspondence. Specifically, develop standardized materials such as PowerPoint slides, capability descriptions, and research study templates for use in communicating about automated scoring capabilities; develop boilerplate text for external audiences and proposals; and craft proposal text on demand, based on existing standard materials and input from automated scoring researchers.

• Conduct or assist in direction and management of research projects. Conduct research of his or her own design, under general oversight of assigned supervisor. Manage resources across a wide-range of studies designed to support or enhance automated scoring technologies. Recruit and hire field staff; develop and monitor project budgets; coordinate and supervise field staff and consultants.

• Conduct literature searches; review current research on research models and methods; review and evaluate ongoing developments in automated scoring research; and evaluate evolving business needs. Perform independent analyses of information by reading, summarizing, and evaluating it preliminary to undertaking research. Update standard materials as needed, based on new developments in research or external conditions.

• Provide training and consultation on computer and systems applications, including customized annotation systems. Train and instruct staff on methods and procedures for annotation, data presentation, and explain methods of implementation to technical staff.

• Contact, establish, and develop relationships with research community and with data sources.

• Arrange and attend conferences and meetings; present research findings at professional meetings.

EXPERIENCE AND SKILLS

EDUCATION

A Master's degree in linguistics, computer science, and/or natural language processing (NLP) is necessary.

EXPERIENCE

The successful candidate will have four years of progressively responsible research experience in linguistics or natural language processing. Candidates must demonstrate the ability to craft high-quality written communications for technical and non-technical audiences and have experience managing a large number of concurrent projects.

APPLYING

Interested parties can apply for the position through the following website:

http://ets.pereless.com/careers/index.cfm?fuseaction=83080.viewjobdetail&CID=83080&JID=122972&BUID=2538

If there are any questions, please contact:

Dave Yanchuk (609) 406-5291 dyanchuk@ets.org

Postdoc Position at HRL Laboratories

• Employer: HRL Laboratories, LLC
• Job Title: POST DOC RESEARCH STAFF - Social Media Analysis & Data Mining
• Location: Malibu, CA
• Deadline: Open until filled
• Date Posted: 26-Jan-2012
• Contact email: hmoon@hrl.com

HRL Laboratories, LLC. (http://www.hrl.com) has openings for a postdoctoral researcher position in the area of social media analysis / data mining. HRL laboratories is one of the most innovative research organizations in industry. Overlooking the pacific ocean in the hills above Malibu, California, our beautiful surroundings are matched by our capabilities and commitment to being a world-class research and development lab. We collaborate with top researchers in academia to advance the fields of information and systems sciences, sensors and materials, applied electromagnetics, and microelectronics. Please visit http://www.hrl.com/careers/cars_jobs.html for more information. For job considerations, please send your cover letter and CV to hmoon@hrl.com.

Job Description:

EDUCATION DESIRED: Ph.D. in Computer Science, Statistics, EE or related fields

ESSENTIAL JOB FUNCTIONS: Primary job function is to apply statistical data analysis and text processing techniques to problems and applications in data mining. Tasks will include the development, simulation, evaluation, and implementation of algorithms and models. Additional job functions include solving customer problems, writing invention disclosures, publishing papers, briefing customers, and assisting in marketing HRL expertise.

EXPERIENCE DESIRED: Research experience in one or more of the following areas: Text processing, sentiment analysis, data mining, web & social media processing, large-scale data processing, and machine learning. Experience developing innovative solutions based upon the application of relevant research results from a wide variety of sources.

KNOWLEDGE DESIRED: Background in one or more of the following areas: natural language processing, social network analysis, statistical analysis, data mining, strong programming skills, particularly proficient with C/C++, Java, R and/or Matlab. Experience with MapReduce or Hadoop, and proficiency in Spanish/Portuguese language is a plus.

ESSENTIAL PHYSICAL/MENTAL REQUIREMENTS: Good communication (verbal and written) skills, active participation in R&D team activities is required. Able and willing to occasionally travel.

SPECIAL REQUIREMENTS (e.g. driver’s license, special tools or restrictions): U.S. citizenship or permanent resident status required.

We are proud to be an EEO/AA employer M/F/D/V. We maintain a drug-free workplace and perform pre-employment substance abuse testing.

Postdoc or Research Associate - Natural Language Processing

• Employer: IHMC (www.ihmc.us)
• Rank or Title: Research Associate - Natural Language Processing
• Specialty: Computational Linguistics, Natural Language Processing
• Location: Ocala, FL
• Deadline: Applications accepted until position is filled
• Date Posted: January 3rd, 2012
• Contact email ywilks@ihmc.us

About Us IHMC is a not-for-profit research institute of the Florida University System and is affiliated with several Florida universities. Researchers at IHMC pioneer technologies aimed at leveraging and extending human capabilities. These systems fit the human and machine components together in ways that exploit their respective strengths and mitigate their respective weaknesses. The design and fit of computational prostheses require a broader interdisciplinary range than is typically found in one organization, thus IHMC staff includes computer scientists, cognitive psychologists, neuroscientists, physicians, philosophers, engineers and social scientists of various stripes, as well as some researchers who resist all attempts to classify them. Current active research areas include: knowledge modeling and sharing, adjustable autonomy, robotics, advanced interfaces and displays, communication and collaboration, computer-mediated learning systems, intelligent data and language understanding, software agents, expertise studies, work practice simulation, knowledge representation, and other related areas. IHMC faculty and staff collaborate extensively with industry and government to develop science and technology that can be enabling with respect to society's broader goals. IHMC researchers receive funding (current funding in force exceeds $25,000,000) from a wide range of government and private sources. IHMC research partners have included: DARPA, NSF, NASA, Army, Navy, Air Force, NIH, DOT, IDEO, Nokia, Sun Microsystems, Microsoft, Boeing, Lockheed, and SAIC, among others.

The candidate will be appointed on a new US Government project on metaphor detection and understanding, due to start in the coming months and run for up to five years. Ocala, Florida is an excellent location, close to Florida’s major university and about an hour from both coasts. IHMC is housed in an excellent, state of the art building in the city center.

Required:

▪ Natural language processing / computational linguistics background. Ideal: metaphor and/or machine learning applications

▪ Substantial skills in processing large scale corpora. Ideal: Java skills and standard statistical procedures.

▪ Ph.D. in computational linguistics / natural language processing or related areas.

Skills and Experience:

▪ 3+ plus years experience in natural language processing / computational linguistics in industry or large scale academic research project.

▪ Expertise in at least some of the following specific NLP areas and topics: question answering, lexical semantics, collocations, terminology extraction, disambiguation, multi-word expressions, (shallow) parsing, named entity recognition, lexical acquisition, paraphrasis acquisition, information extraction, text classification, evaluation methodologies.

▪ Familiarity with existing data resources and tools: Wordnet, POS taggers, parsers, LingPipe, SVMLight, NLTK, Weka, and similar tools.

▪ Ideal: experience with ontologies, RDF, other semantic web resources or tools.

Apply to Yorick Wilks at: ywilks@ihmc.us

Visiting Assistant/Associate/Full Professor - Queens College of CUNY

• Employer: Queens College of the City University of New York
• Location: New York, NY
• Deadline: Review of applications to begin on March 1, 2012
• Website: http://www.cs.qc.cuny.edu/
• Date posted: January 4, 2012

Visiting Assistant/Associate/Full Professor

The Department of Computer Science at Queens College of The City University of New York (CUNY) is pleased to announce a visiting faculty position for academic year 2012-2013, beginning September 1. This is a research-focused temporary position, and we encourage applications from candidates with a successful publication history in machine translation, speech recognition, or other research areas of natural language processing or machine learning.

Both junior and senior researchers are encouraged to apply; compensation and title are commensurate with qualifications and experience. Candidates are expected to collaborate with members of our current faculty in computational linguistics -- either on existing research projects or on new joint endeavors. If interested in teaching experience, the visiting faculty member is also invited to teach one course on a topic closely related to his or her research specialty.

The department's computational linguistics faculty, which include two current NSF CAREER Award winners, participate actively in the Ph.D. programs in computer science and linguistics, based at CUNY Graduate Center. These faculty members have active research grants from the NSF, DARPA, the Army Research Lab, and the Air Force Office of Scientific Research. More information about the growing research community in computational linguistics across CUNY is available on this website: http://nlpatcuny.cs.qc.cuny.edu/

Qualifying candidates must have an earned Ph.D. by August 2012 in computer science, linguistics, or a closely related field, with a demonstrated research record in the areas listed above. Also required are the ability to work with Ph.D. students, interest in productive scholarship, teaching and communication skills, and ability to cooperate with others for the good of the institution.

Candidates should submit a letter of application detailing their teaching, research, and grant writing interests and experience, and a curriculum vitae to:

Dr. Matt Huenerfauth, Search Committee Chair

Department of Computer Science

Queens College-CUNY

65-30 Kissena Blvd.

Flushing, New York 11365-1597

matthew.huenerfauth (at) qc.cuny.edu

Email submissions with PDF attachments are preferred. In addition, please arrange for three current letters of reference to be submitted directly by the recommenders. Review of applications will begin on March 1, 2012, and will continue until the position is filled.

CUNY offers a comprehensive benefits package to employees and eligible dependents based on job title and classification. We are committed to enhancing our diverse academic community by actively encouraging people with disabilities, minorities, veterans, and women to apply. We take pride in our pluralistic community and continue to seek excellence through diversity and inclusion. EO/AA Employer.