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ETS is the world’s premier educational measurement institution and a leader in educational research. As an innovator in developing achievement and occupational tests for clients in business, education, and government, we are determined to advance educational excellence for the communities we serve.
ETS's Research & Development division has an opening for a research scientist in the NLP, Speech & DIAMONDS (Dialog, Multimodal, and Speech) research group. The projects in this research group focus on the application of NLP & Speech processing algorithms in automated scoring capabilities for assessment tasks involving constructed responses (such as essays and spoken responses) as well as on the application of spoken and multimodal dialog systems to assessment tasks. This is an excellent opportunity to be part of a world-renowned research and development team and have a significant impact on existing and next generation NLP & Speech systems and their application to assessment.
BASIC FUNCTIONS AND RESPONSIBILITIES
Take responsibility for conceptualizing, proposing, obtaining funding for, and directing small projects in the areas of speech processing, speech recognition, and automated speech scoring and/or assisting in moderate-to-major speech research projects.
Projects may include (1) research projects, (2) development projects that use scientific principles to create (a) tools to improve the efficiency or quality of the practice of test development or statistical analysis: (b) innovative item types: or (c) the scoring of responses to open-ended items and (3) development projects that use scientific principles to create new products or product prototypes. Small research and development projects typically have minimal budgets, few or no staff other than the project director, a timeline of a year or less, and a single deliverable that is relatively narrow in scope. Major projects have substantial budgets, involve the coordination of many individuals internal and possibly external to ETS, may run across years, and may produce multiple deliverables. Moderate projects fall in between these two types.
Assist in generating or contributing to new knowledge or capability in the field of speech processing, speech recognition, and spoken language technology, and in applying that new knowledge and capability to existing and/or new ETS products and services. New knowledge may take the form of new or modified educational or psychological theories: new research methodology: new development methodology: new statistical, analytic or interpretative procedures: new test designs and item types: new approaches to scoring examinee responses: and new approaches to reporting. New capabilities include developing software to instantiate new and existing knowledge.
Document and disseminate the results of research and/or development projects through publication and presentation. Publication includes peer-review journals, peer-review conference proceedings, patents, books and book chapters, and other print media. Presentation may be at international, national, or regional conferences, client meetings, and ETS seminars.
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Participate in setting substantive research and development goals and priorities for a group or initiative within a vice presidential area.
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Actively seek input from peers on the quality of one’s work. Participate as a reviewer of others’ work.
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Actively seek mentoring from more senior scientific and other R&D staff, developing a continuing mentoring relationship.
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Develop proposals and budgets for small projects and/or assist in development for moderate-to-major ones.
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Assist more senior scientific staff in consulting on testing program, R&D management, or other ETS management concerns.
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Manage small projects, and/or assist in the management of moderate-to-major ones, by accomplishing directed tasks according to schedule and within budget.
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Develop external professional relationships and work to cultivate a scientist’s identity.
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Become a member and regular presenter at the annual meetings of one or more organizations substantively related to the work of ETS.
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EDUCATION
A Ph.D. in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Natural Language Processing, Computational Linguistics, or a similar area with major education in speech technology, and particularly in speech recognition is required.
EXPERIENCE
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Evidence of independent substantive research experience in spoken language technology and/or development experience for deploying speech technology capabilities is required.
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One year of independent substantive research experience in spoken language technology and/or development experience for deploying speech technology capabilities is required.
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Experience may be gained through doctoral studies.
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Practical expertise with automatic speech recognition systems, experience with machine learning toolkits (e.g., Weka, scikit-learn), and fluency in at least one major programming language (e.g. Java, Python) is required.
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Practical experience with deep learning paradigms and/or deep-learning-based speech recognition systems (e.g., Kaldi) is highly desirable.
Our strength and success are directly linked to the quality and skills of our diverse associates. A background and/or knowledge of accessibility and accommodations for individuals with disabilities, whether through your own experiences or those of someone close to you, is highly desirable.
ETS is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, disability, protected veteran status, or other characteristic protected by law.
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