There is a fully funded PhD position open at Idiap Research Institute on spiking neural
architectures for speech prosody.

The research will build on work done recently at Idiap on creating tools for
physiologically plausible modelling of speech. The current 'toolbox' contains rudimentary
muscle models and means to drive these using conventional (deep) neural networks. The
main focus of the work will involve use of spiking neural networks such as the 'integrate
and fire' type that is broadly representative of those found in biological systems.
Whilst we have focused so far on prosody (actually intonation), the application is open
ended; the focus is on the neural modelling. A key problem to be solved will be that of
training of the spiking networks, especially with the recurrence that is usual in such
networks. We hope to be able to train and use spiking networks as easily as conventional
backpropagation networks, and to shed light on current understanding of how biological
spiking networks learn (e.g., via spike timing-dependent plasticity).

For more information, and to apply, please follow this link:
 http://www.idiap.ch/education-and-jobs/job-10263

Idiap is located in Martigny in French speaking Switzerland, but functions in English and
hosts many nationalities.  PhD students are registered at EPFL. All positions offer quite
generous salaries.  Martigny has a distillery and a micro-brewery and is close to all
manner of skiing, hiking and mountain life.

There are other open positions on Idiap's main page
 https://www.idiap.ch/en/join-us/job-opportunities