Research Assistant for Chatbot-based Support for Self-organization During Studies - salary grade E 13 TV-L Berliner Hochschulen

part-time employment may be possible

Hire Date

The start date for the position is planned for October 1st, 2022, with the qualification goal doctorate. It is limited to a duration of 26 months and a subsequent ongoing employment is supported if the PhD cannot be finished in the given time.

About Us

Most systems and services that are provided by computer science, electrical engineering and information technology finally are oriented on the needs of their human users. To build successfully build such systems and services it essential to investigate and understand users and their behavior when interacting with technology.From this, design principles for human-machine interfaces can be derived and requirements for the underlying technologies can be defined.

The Quality and Usability Lab is part of TU Berlin’s Faculty IV and deals with the design and evaluation of human-machine interaction, in which aspects of human perception, technical systems and the design of interaction are the subject of our research. We focus on self-determined work in an interdisciplinary and international team; for this we offer open and flexible working conditions that promote scientific and personal exchange and are a prerequisite for excellent results.

Tasks

Conception and development of text-based interactive dialogue systems, so-called chatbots, as part of the USOS project (chatbot-based support for self-organization during studies). Machine learning methods are used both to process text-based information and to control dialogs. The range of tasks also includes the design and implementation of graphic user interfaces, e.g., as a web app, Android app or iOS app. The quality and the user experience of the created interaction concepts are then evaluated in the context of user studies.

The specific tasks include:

• Implementation of information extraction for the module transfer system and course catalog of the TU Berlin

• Implementation of natural language understanding, dialog management and response generation for a chatbot

• Communication with project participants on the technical requirements of the chatbot

• Planning and conducting user studies

• Active participation in the conception, construction, and evaluation of the overall system

• Publication and presentation of project and research results in scientific journals, at conferences, and in workshops as well as standardization meetings of ITU-T

Professionally experienced employees from our team support you with self-motivated familiarization with the areas of responsibility.

Requirements

• Master or diploma in electrical engineering, computer engineering/science, informatics, media informatics, media technology, information systems (or an equivalent technical background)

• Ability to work independently in a team and good self-organization

• Very good programming knowledge in Python and its routine use in development environments and experience with working under Linux and the command line

• Experience in the use of machine learning frameworks such as Tensorflow, Keras, or PyTorch

• In-depth knowledge of the principles of machine learning (supervised learning, unsupervised learning and reinforcement learning)

• Previous experience in one of the following areas: Information Extraction, Natural Language Understanding, Natural Language Generation

• Desired previous knowledge (not required)

  • Experience in the preparation and efficient processing of training data for AI-based systems

  • Experience in the development of chatbots or speech dialog systems

  • Experience with transformer-based language models such as BERT or GPT

  • Experience with empirical research and statistical data analysis

• Interest in carrying out experiments with test subjects to determine quality and user experience

• Language skills: German fluent in writing and speaking, English communication secure

• Joy of working in an interdisciplinary and international environment

Compensation

“Tarifvertrag für den öffentlichen Dienst der Länder (TV-L)” (E13, 100%)

Application

Please send the following documents, bundled in a single PDF file, to
Prof. Dr.-Ing. Sebastian Möller bewerbung@qu.tu-berlin.de:

Letter of application, curriculum vitae, copies of certificates, job references.

To ensure equal opportunities between women and men, applications by women with the required qualifications are explicitly desired.

Qualified individuals with disabilities will be favored.

Please send copies only. Original documents will not be returned.