ISCApad #260 |
Monday, February 10, 2020 by Chris Wellekens |
4-1 | Master Informatique en Apprentissage et Traitement Automatique de la Langue : ATAL. Universités du Maine et de Nantes France Les Universités du Maine et de Nantes propose un parcours conjoint de Master Informatique en Apprentissage et Traitement Automatique de la Langue : ATAL !
Le parcours ATAL forme des étudiants issus de filières informatiques à un ensemble de techniques d'apprentissage automatique et de traitement automatique de la langue qui sont au c?ur des applications en ingénierie des langues telles que la traduction automatique, la fouille d?opinions, la recherche d?information, la reconnaissance de la parole et du locuteur? Il s'agit donc de former des étudiants hautement spécialisés qui seront capables de mettre en ?uvre des applications prenant en compte des masses de données complexes et hétérogènes. Au terme de la formation les étudiants seront reconnus comme DataScientist, Chef de projet en ressources linguistiques, Cadre en technologies et services de l?information? La formation s?appuie sur des chercheurs issus des laboratoires du LS2N (Laboratoire des Sciences du Numérique de Nantes) et du LIUM (Laboratoire d'Informatique de l'Université du Maine) et sur des acteurs économiques dont les applications nécessitent des connaissances sur le traitement de données langagières. En outre, la formation est très ancrée dans son écosystème régional et les étudiants seront invités à participer à des Meetup et sensibilisés au monde de l?entrepreneuriat. Il est possible d?accéder à la formation en M1 comme en M2 selon les acquis du candidat. - le M1 peut être indifféremment réalisé au Mans ou à Nantes selon la préférence de l?étudiant.
- l?ensemble des cours du M2 sont mutualisés entre les Universités du Maine et de Nantes et l?étudiant peut librement s?inscrire au Mans ou à Nantes. Le M2 peut être réalisée en présentiel ou en alternance.
Information ---------------- - Nantes : http://www.master-info.univ-nantes.fr/00542841/0/fiche___pagelibre/&RH=1403710895111 - Le Mans: http://www-info.univ-lemans.fr/?page_id=10 Modalités d?accès -------------------------- - Nantes : http://www.sciences-techniques.univ-nantes.fr/72621571/0/fiche___pagelibre/ - Le Mans : http://www-info.univ-lemans.fr/?page_id=211 Contacts ------------- - Nantes : Emmanuel.Morin@univ-nantes.fr - Le Mans : Yannick.Esteve@univ-lemans.fr
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4-2 | Virtual Coaches Modeling Virtual Coaches The European Horizon-2020 project Council of Coaches aims to develop a tool in which virtual embodied coaches form a team of experts that can discuss amongst themselves and with the user how the user could improve his healthy lifestyle behaviors. The project combines state of the art 3D Virtual Avatars with language and reasoning technology and applies this to the area of lifestyle and behavior change coaching. The goal of research is to design, implement and evaluate user interaction with the team of virtual agents, the council of coaches (Home Interface) and one-on-one interaction with a single coach (Mobile Interface). In particular it focuses on
Specific attention will be given to the development of virtual coaches with a wide variety of behavioural characteristics and personality traits. Several studies have shown how low level features such as behaviour expressivity and high level characteristic (e.g. personality traits ) affect user?s involvement in their interaction with the virtual characters and impact his performances (McRorie et al., 2011) (Paiva et al., 2017)). The work in this research will make use of and build upon the GRETA/VIB platform developed at UPMC (Pecune et al., 2014) for multimodal behaviour generation and for visualizing virtual coaches. To apply, send a CV and names of reference to catherine.pelachaud@upmc.fr
H2020 Council of Coaches
Context:
The GRETA/VIB platform is developed at CNRS-ISIR (Pécune et al, 2014). It simulates virtual characters able to communicate with humans in real-time. It is endowed with socio-emotional capabilities. The control of the character is done through two specific languages at the communicative intention level and at the multimodal behavior one. The platform includes several tools to create multimodal behaviors.
The GRETA/VIB platform is used within the European Horizon-2020 project Council of Coaches which aims to develop a tool in which virtual embodied coaches form a team of experts that can discuss amongst themselves and with the user how the user could improve his healthy lifestyle behaviors. The project combines state of the art 3D Virtual characters with language and reasoning technology and applies this to the area of lifestyle and behavior change coaching.
Job Description:
We are looking for an engineer knowledgeable in 3D virtual environment. S/he will participate to Council of Coaches project. Her/his role will be:
- Port the Greta/VIB platform onto Android mobile and VR headset.
- Participate to development of computational model of agent?s multimodal behaviors
- Integrate software modules within the VIB/Greta platform and/or within a bigger software system developed within the H2020 project Coach Council.
- Participate to developers meetings (online and on site) of the H2020 project Coach Council
Profile: Engineer in computer science, Master, PhD
skills:
Mastered skills:
Project Length: 1 year position renewable
Place: ISIR - UPMC
Stipend: depends on applicant qualification
Contact: Catherine Pelachaud, CNRS-ISIR; catherine.pelachaud@upmc.fr
To apply, send a CV, names of reference, master grades (for Master applicants) to catherine.pelachaud@upmc.fr
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4-3 | IEEE CIS Newsletter on Cognitive and Developmental Systems (open access). Dear colleagues,
we are happy to announce the release of the latest issue of the IEEE CIS Newsletter on Cognitive and Developmental Systems (open access). This is a biannual newsletter addressing the sciences of developmental and cognitive processes in natural and artificial organisms, from humans to robots, at the crossroads of cognitive science, developmental psychology, artificial intelligence, machine learning and neuroscience. It is available at: http://goo.gl/pA7WrH Featuring dialog: === 'One developmental architecture to rule them all?' == Dialog initiated by Matthias Rolf, Lorijn Zaadnoordijk and Johan Kwisthout
with responses from: Niels Taatgen, John Spencer, Gary Jones, Gerard Wolff, Clément Moulin-Frier and Paul Verschure
== Topic: Humans have a unique capability to achieve and learn a wide diversity of skills of all kinds, from low-level sensorimotor skills to very abstract linguistic or mathematical skills. Is it possible to develop theories of how general cognitive architectures can display such a general flexibility for skill learning? This dialog adresses this question, and discusses whether and how it would be useful both epistemologically and in practice to aim towards the development of a ?standard integrated cognitive architecture?, akin to ?standard models? in physics, or whether focusing on simple and partial models should be a better approach. In particular, this question is discussed in the context of understanding development in infants, and of building developmental architectures, thus addressing the issue of architectures that not only learn, but that are adaptive themselves. Call for new dialog: === 'Curiosity as Driver of Extreme Specialization in Humans' == Dialog initiated by Celeste Kidd == This dialog asks the question of why and how humans can be driven to extremely specialize. In particular, it proposes the hypothesis that curiosity may play a fundamental role in this process, and highlights many important open questions about how this could happen, and what are the actual mechanisms of curiosity-driven exploration and learning. Those of you interested in reacting to this dialog initiation are welcome to submit a response by May 30th, 2018. The length of each response must be between 600 and 800 words including references (contact pierre-yves.oudeyer@inria.fr). Let us remind you that all issues of the newsletter are all open-access and available at: https://goo.gl/ZjjZNz
I wish you a stimulating reading! Best regards, Pierre-Yves Oudeyer, Editor of the IEEE CIS Newsletter on Cognitive and Developmental Systems Research director, Inria Head of Flowers project-team Inria and Ensta ParisTech, France http://www.pyoudeyer.com Twitter: https://twitter.com/pyoudeyer
and
Fabien Benureau
Assistant Editor
Inria Mnemosyne team
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4-4 | new Masters program in Natural Language Processing and Data Science - Computer Science, Speech, Language, and Knowledge Representation at University of Lorraine, Nancy, France The Institute of Digital Sciences, Management and Cognition at the University of Lorraine
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4-5 | M.Sc. Program in Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Data Science, Université de Lorraine, Nancy (France) M.Sc. Program in Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Data Science
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4-6 | General chair and local arrangements chair of SIGDIAL 2020. The SIGDIAL Exec seeks expressions of interest for the positions of general chair and local arrangements chair of SIGDIAL 2020.
GENERAL CHAIR
The general chair is responsible for schedule management, budget, communication, publicity, management of vendors not directly related to the local arrangements, and creation and maintenance of the conference website.
General chairs have typically attended SIGDIAL multiple times, and have some previous conference organization experience.
If you are interested in serving as general chair of SIGDIAL 2020, please email exec@sigdial.org with the following information:
- Name and affiliation
- Short statement of your interest in and qualifications for serving as general chair
- Previous experience with SIGDIAL: attendance, previous service positions, publications
- Previous experience with conference organization (for SIGDIAL or other conferences)
LOCAL ARRANGEMENTS CHAIR
The local arrangements chair is responsible for choosing and contracting with the conference venue for SIGDIAL, and also the Young Researchers? Roundtable on Spoken Dialog Systems (YRRSDS). They are also responsible for arranging/coordinating space and equipment, management of vendors related to local arrangements, catering and refreshments, organizing the banquet, and providing local information.
Local arrangement chairs have typically attended SIGDIAL at least once, and have some previous conference organization experience. Further, local arrangement chairs are usually based in the same local region as the conference itself. SIGDIAL 2020 will be (approximately) co-located with ACL 2020. ACL 2020 will be held in Seattle, USA, July 6-11 2020. SIGDIAL 2020 will be held immediately before or after ACL, also in Seattle, or somewhere readily accessible from Seattle. In the past, SIGDIAL has usually (but not always) been held at a university facility, rather than a private facility.
If you are interested in serving as local arrangements chair of SIGDIAL 2020, please email exec at exec@sigdial.org with the following information:
- Name and affiliation
- Short statement of your interest in and qualifications for serving as local chair
- Previous experience with SIGDIAL: attendance, previous service positions, publications
- Previous experience with conference organization (for SIGDIAL or other conferences)
- Proposed location and venue for SIGDIAL 2020, including description and statement of why it would be attractive for participants
SELECTION CRITERIA
In addition to self-nominations, the SIGDIAL Exec may nominate further candidates when selecting these roles. These roles will be selected considering a range of criteria, including previous experience with SIGDIAL, previous experience with conference management, and the representation of the organizing committee as a whole, including geography, industry/academia, gender, seniority, and other factors. The Exec may contact interested parties to request further information.
As in past years, the SIGDIAL Exec is responsible for selecting the SIGDIAL organizing committee.
Please direct questions to exec@sigdial.org
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4-7 | CfProposals: 2021 IEEE International Workshop on Machine Learning for Signal Processing (MLSP)Call for Proposals2021 IEEE International Workshop on
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The Media Studies Commission of the International Federation of Television Archives (FIAT/IFTA) is dedicated to fostering collaboration between research and archive communities and mediating the growth of scholarly expertise that adds value to audiovisual archives by means of innovative research. To this purpose, the Media Studies Commission has set up the Media Studies Grant as a way to promote and ensure the valorization of academic knowledge for archival practice. It is a programme that offers support for research carried out at FIAT/IFTA member archives or is of direct relevance to one or more of our member archives. Priority is given to projects that are relevant for the history of member archive institutions, or promise innovative insights into (digital) media historiography or archival practice in general.
2020 Call for Projects
In 2020, FIAT/IFTA’s Media Studies Commission is looking to commission research that adds value to and helps us understand the role of audiovisual archives in a shifting, converging media environment.
Digitization and digital tools enable novel ways of doing and telling media histories. With it, new possibilities for working with archival material and data in academic research open up. At the same time, new tools for discovery, annotation, visualization now span the possibilities of analyzing cultural heritage with a ‘long data’ and distant reading perspective We welcome studies addressing (but not necessarily limited to) the following areas:
Tools and (digital) methods: Producing new narratives in media history by means of digital tools and experimental methods of research and displaying different ways of doing (digital) media history as a way to redefine the value of historical archival content.
Storytelling: Highlighting new and interactive forms of storytelling that help revisit media history practices in the digital age.
Archives as (big) data: Reconceptualizing archives as (big) data to help us tap into unexplored narratives of media history. Reframing the historical and public value of audiovisual archives with mining and visualization tools.
Archival access in the digital age: Renewing strategies and practices for making archives accessible through different digital spaces, including social media and mobile apps. Addressing archival access strategies in an international context or working with datasets1 from different archives.
Users and use practices: Revisiting approaches for researching users and user practices in relation to digital archives.
Awarded candidated are expected to deliver by the end of their grant period:
A written report of their research at the quality standards of a scholarly article.
An audiovisual essay, an interactive digital story or a creative demo (depending on the nature of the proposed project). Please make sure there are no copyright restrictions for the archival material you may want to re-use in this type of output.2
All output needs to mention the support of FIAT/IFTA. Successful candidates are required to present their research results at the FIAT/IFTA World Conference in Dublin, 26-29 October 2020.
The Media Studies Grant makes available a maximum of €7000 for original and innovative projects that aim to:
help us understand the role of audiovisual archives in a digital environment.
unearth new narratives of media history.
collect, disseminate and engage with historical sources that complement existing archive collections.
conceptualize new ways of doing media history in the digital age.
experiment with innovative methods of researching (digital) archives.
valorize and disseminate knowledge of archive collections by means of interactive publications, multi-media presentations, digital applications and other creative demos.
Produce open-source softwares aimed at a better understanding and exploitation of audiovisual archives.
Release open-data corpora that would contribute to help further media studies.
Any questions? Please contact our commission members! For questions pertaining to access, archival collections and datasets made available for reasearch by different archival institutions, you may contact our following members:
Herbert Hayduck (ORF, Austria): archiv@orf.at
Claude Mussou (INA, France): cmussou@ina.fr
Silvia Proscia (RAI, Italy): silvia.proscia@rai.it
Masaya Maéda (NHK, Japan): maeda.m-is@nhk.or.jp
Daniela Floris (RAI, Italy): daniela.floris@rai.it
David Doukhan (INA, France): ddoukhan@ina.fr
Virginia Bazán Gil (RTVE, Spain): virginia.bazan@rtve.es
Lisa Kerrigan (BFI, UK): Lisa.Kerrigan@bfi.org.uk
Bas Agterberg (Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision, NL): bagterberg@beeldengeluid.nl
Liam Wylie (RTÉ, Ireland): Liam.Wylie@rte.ie
Questions pertaining to academic research can be addressed to:
Dana Mustata, University of Groningen, D.Mustata@rug.nl
Andy O’Dwyer, University of Luxembourg, andy.odwyer@uni.lu
Candidates are required to send in their application in PDF format by 15 March 2020.
Applications should be emailed to: Herbert Hayduck, archiv@orf.at
Candidates are required to present their findings at the FIAT/IFTA World Conference and deliever all output as agreed upon in the funding agreemenent between FIAT/IFTA and the candidate.
All results, publications and presentations derived from the study should mention the support of FIAT/IFTA Media Studies Commission and should be made available to FIAT/IFTA.
FIAT/IFTA reserves the right to make accessible the output of funded studies on its own website.
Proposed studies can be part of a bigger project (e.g. master thesis, PhD dissertation, book project, etc.) or can be stand-alone research initiatives that the candidate wishes to pursue.
Applicants can ask for a budget of €2500 up to a maximum of €7000 to support their travel and accommodation costs for the purpose of the proposed study, including travel to FIAT/IFTA-event (see below under “output”).
Researchers affiliated to a research institution who also have teaching responsibilities can use (part of) the allocated budget to buy themselves the research time needed for the proposed study. In this case, they should specify the research time that will be charged on the budget.
Senior researchers may use (parts of) the budget to hire interns or student assistants to assist with tasks on the project (e.g, corpus annotation). When third-party personnel is hired on the project, the senior researcher remains in charge of the project and is resonsibible for the final output.
We encourage master and PhD students as well as researchers affiliated to a university to apply for a Media Studies Grant with FIAT/IFTA Media Studies Commission.
Master and PhD students applying for a Study Grant need to send in together with their application a letter from their thesis supervisor showing support for the proposed study.
Awarded studies must be affiliated to a FIAT/IFTA member archive, either by exploring their collection or datasets for research purposes and/or carrying out research that is of direct relevance to a member archive institution.
Applicants should provide a support letter from FIAT/IFTA member‘s representative providing the collections which will be used in the study.
Applicants must send in an application for a Media Studies Grant. The applications should not exceed a maximum of 1000 words and need to include a:
Project description. This should outline the rationale of the project, the main research question(s), a description of the topic being researched, indication of the archival material or dataset to be studied and an explanation of the relevance of the proposed study for the research as well as archive communities. In case the project is part of a larger project, the candidate needs to specify how the proposed study contributes to the overall project.
Output. Candidates should specify the output resulting from the proposed study, including publications, presentations, software development, corpora annotation, and any other forms of knowledge utilization (e.g. virtual exhibitions, video essays, interactive storytelling applications etc.). At the end of their study, successful candidates are required to present their findings at a FIAT/IFTA public event to be agreed between the Media Studies Commission and the successful candidate and send in a written report outlining the research they’ve conducted and the main findings of their research. This report will be made available on the FIAT/IFTA website.
Workplan. Applicants should detail as much as possible all the research activities they plan to carry out as part of the proposed study and the time allocated for each of these activities. Please be aware that the Media Studies Grant only supports small-scale projects of 3-5 months.
Budget. Travel, accommodation and secondment costs can be covered by the Media Studies Grant. The budget can also be used for funding short-term internships, archive annotation campaigns, or paying for transport/accomodation fees required for the interactions with the FIAT archive member. For experimental projects, minimal technical costs may be eligible. In any technical costs are involved, we encourage the applicant to make contact with the Media Studies Commission before submitting their application, to ensure that the costs can be covered by the grant. Applicants should detail how the budget will be used. In case the proposed study is part of a bigger project, the applicant should specify any additional funding he/she may have received. Researchers asking for a secondment grant, should specify how their allocation of teaching and research time is divided and how much research time they wish to allocate to the proposed study and charge on the budget. Senior researchers hiring interns or student assistants to assist with the project, need to provide a statement with the number of hours and the budget allocated to the hired personnel.
Communication and dissemination activities. Applicants should present a communication and dissemination plan of how they intend to publicize and make available the findings of their study for the research and archive communities.
Applications should be sent in PDF format by 15 March 2020 to Herbert Hayduck at: archiv@orf.at.
All applications will be assessed internally by the members of the Media Studies Commission. Selected candidates are expected to present their study at the International FIAT/IFTA World Conference in Dublin.
More about the International Federation of Television Archives (FIAT/IFTA)
FIAT/IFTA provides a forum for exchange of knowledge and experience between its members, to promote the study of any topic relevant to the development and use of audiovisual archives and to establish international standards on key issues regarding all aspects of audiovisual media archive management. Within FIAT/IFTA, the Media Studies Commission promotes academic research that promotes knowledge, understanding and research of holdings of member audiovisual archives.
1 Please check in advance whether any datasets are available for research at the archive institution you’re interested in collaborating with.
2 The candidates carry full responsibility for determining the copyright status of the archival material they may want to re-use their digital output. To avoid copyright infringements, always check with the archive holder on the copyright status of the archival material you’re interested in re-using.
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