Postdoctoral Researcher

(computational linguistics or computer science)

Models of Intercomprehension in Speech and Language

The Language Science and Technology department at Saarland University seeks to fill a postdoctoral position. Applications are invited from individuals with research expertise in any field related to speech science and speech technology. Our research project is concerned with the analysis of cross-lingual mutual intelligibility between Slavic languages. It studies the auditory-perceptual intercomprehension of Slavic languages based on analyses of the acoustic, phonetic and phonological structure of spoken utterances. This line of investigation will be complemented by using adaptation techniques established in speech synthesis and recognition to measure the distance between languages. In addition, similarity will be determined on the level of complete utterances.

The postdoc will join a vibrant community of speech and language researchers at Saarland University whose expertise spans areas such as computational linguistics, psycholinguistics, language and speech technology, speech science, theoretical and corpus linguistics, computer science, and psychology.

Requirements: The successful candidate should have a Ph.D./Master's in Computer Science, Computational Linguistics, or a related discipline, with a strong background in speech science and speech technology, in particular TTS and ASR. Strong programming skills are essential. A good command of English is mandatory. Working knowledge of German is desirable but not a prerequisite. Candidates must have completed their Ph.D. by the time of the appointment.

The position is a full position (100%) on the German E13 scale and subject to the final approval by the funding agency. Starting dates can be between July and October, 2018. The appointment will be for between one and four years.

About the department: The department of Language Science and Technology is one of the leading departments in the speech and language area in Europe. The flagship project at the moment is the CRC on Information Density and Linguistic Encoding. Furthermore, the department is involved in the cluster of excellence Multimodal Computing and Interaction. It also runs a significant number of European and nationally funded projects. In total it has seven faculty and around 50 postdoctoral researchers and PhD students.

How to apply: Please send us: (1) a letter of motivation, (2) your CV, (3) your transcripts, (4) a list of publications, and (5) the names and contact information of at least two references, as a single PDF or a link to a PDF if the file size is more than 3 MB.

Please apply by April 3rd, 2018.

Contacts: If you are interested in the project, please send an email to Bernd Möbius (moebius@coli.uni-saarland.de) and Dietrich Klakow (dietrich.klakow@lsv.uni-saarland.de).