PhD-Postdoc Researcher Tilburg University

PhD Researcher and a Postdoc Researcher

Tilburg University
Tilburg University is a modern, specialized university. Its education and research are of high quality. Students and employees experience Tilburg University as an environment in which they are challenged and inspired. Moreover, it offers excellent fringe benefits and a corporate culture in which commitment and cooperation are central themes.

Faculty of Humanities, Department of Communication and Information Sciences
Research and education of the Department of Communication and Information Sciences is organized around the themes of language technology, human-computer interaction, perception and cognition, business communication and digital media, and discourse studies. The department’s inspiring working environment stimulates its employees to realize their ambitions.

Within the Department of Communication and Information Sciences, we are looking for two new enthusiastic and competent colleagues, one at PhD and one at Post-doc level:

PhD RESEARCHER
Vacancy number 500.08.06, 4 years, fulltime

POST-DOC RESEARCHER
Vacancy number 500.08.07, 3 years, (parttime 80%)

These positions are part of the larger project “Bridging the gap between psycholinguistics and computational linguistics: The case of referring expressions,” funded by a Vici grant from the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO), awarded to Emiel Krahmer. In spring 2009, a second PhD and a second Post-doc researcher will be hired, to complete the research team for this project.

Summary of the project
Real-life scenes contain many different objects, each of which can be referred to in many different ways. When a speaker wants to point out one of these objects to an addressee, the speaker usually has no problems in quickly producing a referring expression, supported with appropriate gestures and facial expressions, singling out the intended object (“Do you see the man in blue raincoat over there?”). How do speakers do this? Both in psycholinguistics and computational linguistics, researchers have addressed aspects of this question, but we still have a rather incomplete understanding of how the human production of referring expressions works. In this project, we try to bridge the gap between the two disciplines. Such a bridge has both theoretical and methodological advantages. Psycholinguistics has important insights to offer in the human production of referring expressions and a methodology involving carefully constructed and controlled experiments; computational linguistics offers a well-established approach involving corpus analysis and computational modeling. Together they can be harnessed to achieve new scientific insights in the human production of referring expressions, which in turn may result in a better understanding of speech production in general. This also has societal and technological relevance, since such insights are important for developing software characters with human-like appearances and with verbal and non-verbal communicative capabilities (“virtual humans”). For more information about the project, we refer to http://fdlwww.uvt.nl/~krahmer/Vici.pdf.

Requirements

For one position, we seek a candidate with a background in psycholinguistics, communication & information sciences, social sciences or some related area, with experience in doing experiments, and preferably with a proven interest in either speech production, non-verbal communication, scene perception or adaptation.
For the other position we are looking for a researcher with a background in computational linguistics, computer science or some related area, with programming experience and preferably with a proven interest in natural language generation or modeling human language production.
Both positions can be filled at the PhD and at the Post-doc level.
The PhD candidate has a (research) master degree in one of the mentioned area’s, a strong interest in doing research, excellent writing skills and a good command of English.
The Post-doc candidate has a PhD in one of the mentioned areas, excellent writing skills, a good command of English and an excellent track record of internationally refereed publications. Teaching experience, and a willingness to participate in the curriculum (e.g., thesis supervision) is considered an advantege.

Information
For more information please contact Emiel Krahmer via email (E.J.Krahmer@uvt.nl) or phone (+31.13.466.3070). Relevant links: Tilburg University (http://www.uvt.nl / http://www.tilburguniversity.nl), Department of Communication and Information Sciences (http://www.tilburguniversity.nl/faculties/humanities/dci/).

Terms of employment
Tilburg University is rated among the top Dutch employers, offering excellent terms of employment. The collective labour agreement of Tilburg University applies. The selected candidates will start with a contract for one year, concluded by an evaluation. Upon a positive outcome of the first-year evaluation, the candidate will be offered an employment contract for the remaining years.

The PhD candidate will receive a starting salary of € 2.000 gross per month in the first year, up to € 2.558 in the 4th year. The selected candidate is expected to have written a PhD thesis by the end of the contract (which may be based on articles).
The Post-doc candidate will be ranked as a researcher with a starting salary (based on fulltime) of minimally € 2.916 gross per month. Furthermore, the usual facilities (desk, computer, options model) are offered, as well as support with housing, immigrations, etc.

Applications
Applications should include cover letter, Curriculum Vitae, and names of two references. Application letters should be sent before the application deadline of April 20, 2008, by regular mail to mr. P. van Balen, Human Resources, Faculty of Humanities, Room D304, Tilburg University, P.O. Box 90153, NL-5000 LE Tilburg, The Netherlands or by email to solliciterenfdl@uvt.nl. In your letter, please refer to the relevant vacancy code.

It is the policy of the university to increase the number of women employed. Also members of ethnic minority groups and handicapped people are expressly invited to apply.

Scholarship Tags: PhD, Postdoc, Researcher, Tilburg, University