3 Post-doctoral positions available in the 'Human Language Technologies - HLT' Research Unit at the Bruno Kessler Foundation, Center for Information Technology.

Workplace description:

The Human Language Technology is a multi-disciplinary research unit that addresses the automatic processing of human language for a range of tasks. In particular, the research unit focuses on: automatic speech recognition, machine translation and content processing.

The HLT unit has been developing state-of-the-art technology in all the main research areas it operates in. The group has consistently performed well in several international evaluations, and is currently engaged in international projects for open source software development (e.g. the Moses platform for statistical machine translation). The unit also provides technological support and high-level services in order to optimize the internal research activities, namely a shared and efficient computing environment, software tools, up to the creation and management of large scale linguistic resources.

The HLT group is part of the larger network of research labs focusing on Human Language Technologies and related domains in the Trento region, that is quickly becoming one of the areas with the highest concentration of researchers in HLT and related fields anywhere in Europe.

More information about the HLT Unit is available at http://hlt.fbk.eu

The HLT Research Unit, is looking for 3 candidates to carry out research activities in the field of

Textual Inferences, Machine Translation and Speech Recognition. Each research position will be funded through the following European research projects:

MateCat: http://www.matecat.com

EU-Bridge: http://www.eu-bridge.eu

EXCITEMENT: website in progress

Open positions:

A Postdoctoral position in Textual Inferences

(Ref.Code HLT_PostDoc2012_TI)

The candidate is expected to carry out research activities in the context of the EU-funded project EXCITEMENT on multilingual semantic processing. The goal of the EXCITEMENT project is to develop generic semantic 'engines' or platforms for robust textual inference that are applicable across languages and linguistic frameworks. These inference platforms will be leveraged for unsupervised text exploration on customer interaction data. Concrete systems will be developed

for English, German, and Italian. Project partners are Bar-Ilan University, DFKI Saarbrücken, University of Heidelberg, Almawave S.r.l, NICE Systems, and OMQ GmbH.

The selected candidate will join the FBK research group with the aim of advancing the state of the art on component-based textual entailment.

A Postdoctoral position in Machine Translation

(Ref.Code HLT_PostDoc2012_MT)

The candidate is expected to contribute original research results inside leading edge international projects. The aim is to advance the state of the art in the integration of statistical MT in computer assisted translation and in adaptive MT, by drawing ideas and contributions from different areas, such as machine learning, statistical language processing, high performance computing, etc.

A Postdoctoral position in Speech Recognition

(Ref.Code HLT_PostDoc2012_SR)

The candidate is expected to contribute original research results inside a leading edge international project. The aim is to advance the state-of-the-art in multilingual speech processing by improving acoustic modelling, language modelling, and adaptation to different domains, conditions and genres. The contribution will be evaluated on application scenarios that include both efficient annotation of audiovisual archives and live processing of audio streams.

Job requirements:

 Applicants should have a PhD degree related to any of the specific research areas mentioned (computational linguistics, speech processing or related fields)

 Experience in statistical modelling, speech processing or machine learning (preferable on approaches applied to NLP tasks)

 Experience in distributed software development (open source)

 Skills in experimental work and development of algorithms

 Ability to work and deliver in funded research projects

 Oral and written proficiency in English

In adherence to FBK's policy to promote equal opportunity and gender balance, in case of equal applications, female candidates will be given preference.

Employment:

Contract type: Full time, 30-month contract (may be extended up to 6 months).

Number of positions: 3

Gross salary: from 37,500 to 41,500 €per year (depending on the candidate’s experience)

Benefits: 28 vacation days per year, flexi-time, company subsidized cafeteria or meal vouchers, internal car park, welcome office support for visa formalities, accommodation, social security, etc., reductions on bank accounts, public transportation, sport, accommodation and language courses fees.

Start date: Spring 2012

Location: Povo, Trento (Italy)

Application process:

To apply online, please send your detailed CV (.pdf format) including a list of publications, a statement of research interests and contact information for at least 2 references. Please include in your CV your authorization for the handling of the your personal information as per the Personal data Protection Code, Legislative Decree no. 196/2003 June 2003.

Applications must be sent to jobs@fbk.eu

Emails should have the reference code related to the position of interest (

HLT_PostDoc2012_TI, HLT_PostDoc2012_MT or HLT_PostDoc2012_SR)

Application deadline: 9 April 2012

Short-listed candidates will be contacted for an interview. Non-selected applicants will be notified of their exclusion at the end of the selection process.

Please note that FBK may contact short-listed candidates who were not selected for the current openings within a period of 6 months for any selection process for similar positions.

For transparency purposes, the name of the selected candidate, upon his/her acceptance of the position, will be published on the FBK website at the bottom of the selection notice