Boston AI Institute

We are looking for excellent candidates to fill two PhD positions that are currently available at the University of Namur in the field of artificial intelligence, financed by the ARIAC project. The two positions focus on the following research topics:
Language games for ontology alignment under partial observability
Computational construction grammar and procedural semantics for multi-modal, linguistic, human-machine interaction
The deadline for applying for these positions is July 1st 2022. Soon-to-be graduating master students are welcome to apply provided that they will have graduated before the start of the position. A more detailed description of the project and the application procedure is included here below.

Thank you for helping us spread the word.

Best wishes,
Katrien Beuls, Anthony Cleve and Bruno Dumas

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Title
Full-time PhD researcher in artificial intelligence - Université de Namur
Language games for ontology alignment under partial observability (ARIAC project)
https://jobs.unamur.be/emploi.2022-05-17.7380520887
https://euraxess.ec.europa.eu/jobs/785563

Project
ARIAC by DigitalWallonia4.ai is a research project funded by the Walloon Region bringing together the five French-speaking universities and four Walloon research centres with the primary objective of accelerating the development of artificial intelligence technologies in Wallonia. The project is part of the TRAIL (Trusted AI Labs) initiative, launched in September 2020, which aims at enhancing the development of artificial intelligence technologies in Wallonia.

In the context of this position, you will investigate how a population of agents can autonomously develop a new language for exchanging information. The information held by each agent might be stored in entirely different formats and according to different ontologies. Through task-based communicative interactions, the agents invent, adopt and align the building blocks of an emergent language. This language can then be used by all agents in the population to exchange information, as it forms an abstraction layer over the individual ontological organisations and storage formats.

You will carry out this PhD project both individually and in collaboration with other researchers in the field. It is conceived as a 4-year program, starting with a 2-year contract that is renewable for up to 2 additional years. You will be supervised by Prof. dr. K. Beuls and Prof. dr. A. Cleve.

Profile
You have obtained a master’s degree in artificial intelligence, computer science, linguistics, mathematics or a related domain. You have a solid academic track record.
You are passionate about building intelligent systems that are capable of interacting with their users and environment through natural language.
You strive for excellence and have a scientific mindset.
You are a loyal team player, who can work autonomously and deliver solid scientific work.
You have strong communication skills and a good command of English. Knowledge of French is considered as a plus.
Additional information
For additional information please do not hesitate to contact Prof. K. Beuls or Prof. A. Cleve (see addresses below).

Important dates
Submission deadline: July 1st, 2022 (11h59 pm AoE).
Expected starting date: September 1st, 2022.

How to apply?
Applications should be sent by e-mail to secretar....be, katrie....be AND anthon....be and contain the following:
A motivation letter describing your interest in the research topic
Your CV
A copy of your diplomas (Bachelor and Master, if available)
A transcript with the grades you obtained for each course taken on each university year
The name and e-mail address of two references to be contacted upon request

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Title
Full-time PhD researcher in artificial intelligence - Université de Namur
Computational construction grammar and procedural semantics for multi-modal, linguistic, human-machine interaction (ARIAC project)
https://jobs.unamur.be/emploi.2022-05-17.2794384091
https://euraxess.ec.europa.eu/jobs/785573

Project
ARIAC by DigitalWallonia4.ai is a research project funded by the Walloon Region bringing together the five French-speaking universities and four Walloon research centres with the primary objective of accelerating the development of artificial intelligence technologies in Wallonia. The project is part of the TRAIL (Trusted AI Labs) initiative, launched in September 2020, which aims at enhancing the development of artificial intelligence technologies in Wallonia.

Current techniques for linguistic human-machine interaction focus on either speech signals, textual data or gestures. However, communication between humans is multi-modal in nature. In particular, spoken utterances are accompanied by gestures, pointing, eye gaze, facial expressions, and prosody amongst others. These multi-modal channels are of great importance to supporting the basic function of language, i.e. exchanging information between individuals. A great challenge for human-machine interaction resides thus in the integration of multi-modal signals into a single device for comprehending and producing natural language expressions. Within the ARIAC project, we will develop a novel methodology for multi-modal language comprehension and production. This methodology will be situated within the framework of computational construction grammar, a family of linguistic theories which is well-suited to accommodate the representation and processing of linguistic knowledge that combines different sources of information. While the representation of the form of linguistic expressions will consist in abstractions over data captured through different feature channels, the representation of the meaning of linguistic expressions will be formalised using procedural semantics. In this way, the information captured in the multi-modal linguistic expressions can be executed by a machine, or a machine can produce multi-modal expressions based on procedural semantic representations. The primary application domain of this research will be systems for multi-modal human-machine interaction, i.e. systems where humans can give instructions to a machine by simultaneously speaking and gesturing.

You will carry out this PhD project both individually and in collaboration with other researchers in the field. It is conceived as a 4-year program, starting with a 2-year contract that is renewable for up to 2 additional years. You will be supervised by Prof. dr. K. Beuls and Prof. dr. B. Dumas.

Profile
You have obtained a master’s degree in artificial intelligence, computer science, linguistics, mathematics or a related domain. You have a solid academic track record.
You are passionate about building intelligent systems that are capable of interacting with their users and environment through natural language.
You strive for excellence and have a scientific mindset.
You are a loyal team player, who can work autonomously and deliver solid scientific work.
You have strong communication skills and a good command of English. Knowledge of French is considered as a plus.
Additional information
For additional information please do not hesitate to contact Prof. K. Beuls or Prof. B. Dumas (see addresses below).

Important dates
Submission deadline: July 1st, 2022 (11h59 pm AoE).
Expected starting date: September 1st, 2022.

How to apply?
Applications should be sent by e-mail to secretar....be, katrie....be AND bruno....be and contain the following:
A motivation letter describing your interest in the research topic
Your CV
A copy of your diplomas (Bachelor and Master, if available)
A transcript with the grades you obtained for each course taken on each university year
The name and e-mail address of two references to be contacted upon request

Full-time PhD student in AI - Computational construction grammar and procedural semantics for multi-modal, linguistic, human-machine interaction (ARIAC project) About the employer The University of Namur (UNamur) is located in the centre of Belgium, in the French-speaking part of the country. It offers quality education to more than 7,000 students every year and hosts more than 900 researchers in all fields of expertise. The Faculty of Computer Science prov...

CALL FOR APPLICANTS
Postdoctoral research fellow
Interuniversity research center on Integrated System for the Marine Environment (www.isme.unige.it) at the University of Genoa (www.unige.it)
1 year duration (with possibility of renewal)
pre-tax amount: € 23250

Job Description

The Interuniversity research center on Integrated System for the Marine Environment is accepting applications for the position of postdoctoral research fellow to start on 1st July 2022.
The research fellow will contribute to an ongoing project on the control of autonomous underwater vehicles operating in very shallow water areas. The objective of this research grant is the development of an obstacle detection and avoidance. The vehicle will be endowed with a forward-looking sonar and a camera. First, it will be necessary to develop image processing and machine learning algorithms for both the acoustic and optical images, with the goal of detecting the position of the obstacles. Then, the research will focus on the development of control strategies to avoid the detected obstacles.

Qualifications

Applicants should have a Ph.D. in a closely related engineering discipline (e.g., robotics, computer science, computer engineering). The postdoctoral associate must have excellent oral and written communication skills and a strong interest in marine robotics, control & perception. The postdoctoral research fellow must have expertise/experience in control engineering and robotics, including:
- feedback control theory
- object oriented programming in C++
- knowledge of ROS and/or ROS2
- computer vision
- machine learning

About the institution

The interuniversity research center on Integrated System for the Marine Environment (ISME) collects nine Italian university operating in the field of marine robotics. It has been funded in 1999 and has been ever since very active at the European level. The University of Genoa is the legal headquarters of ISME. Recent projects carried out by ISME are the WiMUST project, on autonomous geotechnical surveying with a team of marine robots (https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/645141), the DexROV project, on semi-autonomous teleoperation of ROVs from remote locations (https://www.dexrov.eu/) and the ROBUST project, on deep sea mining exploration with AUVs (http://eu-robust.eu/).

Application process

The call, explaining the application process, is reported here
https://concorsi.unige.it/home/procedure/3290/?downloadAttachment=&code=ftv547cnpkfgzlv0x6vbdrc51
Specifically, the program is the number 28.

The application can be submitted at:
https://concorsi.unige.it/home/procedure/3317

D.R. n. 1724 del 22.4.2022 Programma n. 28

Open PhD Positions AI & Data Analytics (AIDA) Group @ Ghent University

The AIDA group is seeking motivated candidates for up to three fully funded four-year PhD student positions in Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and Data Visualization. Candidates with a PhD that are interested in a postdoc position, please do also contact us.

Our group conducts internationally top research in AI in the areas of machine learning and knowledge discovery. An overview of our group and research portfolio can be found at https://aida.ugent.be. We are looking for candidates for the following projects:

Machine learning on knowledge graphs. This project aims to overcome challenges created by both the diversity present in knowledge graphs and by their distributed nature, in comparison to current machine learning methods for graphs. Collaboration with the semantic web group and the recently founded SOLID lab Flanders.

Machine learning & interactive visualization for single-cell data. Single-cell data allows us to study biological processes in detail. This project aims to enable more generic use of expert knowledge in machine learning and visualization for biological data. Collaboration with the DAMBI research group (VIB & Ghent University).

Machine learning for the job market. People are all unique and perhaps jobs are too. This and other aspects make the job market a difficult setting, for example for recommenders. This project aims to better understand and tackle the challenges of applying machine learning in the job market. Collaboration with the VDAB (Flanders employment agency).

Funding comes from the ERC, FWO, and the Flanders AI Research programme.

Your profile

You will need to hold a master’s degree in a relevant area with demonstrated first-class performance (e.g., outstanding grades, thesis result, or publications). Ideal candidates demonstrate mastery of the core aspects of machine learning:

● Fundamentals of probability and statistics

● Algorithm design, discrete/continuous optimisation

● Programming (in Python, C++/Java, JavaScript, …)

Experience with data visualization, user interfaces, and/or cell biology is a plus.

The research environment

The research will be supervised by Prof. Tijl De Bie and Prof. Jefrey Lijffijt of AIDA, and the single-cell data project also by Prof. Yvan Saeys (https://www.dambi.ugent.be/). We are engaging international teams with a track record in world-leading research. We are part of the Ghent University IDLab and the cross-university Flanders AI Research initiative.

Ghent University is a comprehensive internationally leading research-intensive university. English is the working language; knowledge of Dutch or French is not required. The university also offers a wide range of courses for skills professionalization. Ghent is a historical, vibrant, and internationally minded city in Belgium with 260k inhabitants.

Further info & application procedure

Applications may be sent by email to jefrey.lijffijt at ugent.be. Please include a motivation letter, CV, and contact details of 1 to 3 referees. Do not include reference letters, these will be solicited by us. Please mention which project you are interested in. Suitable candidates will be invited for an interview. Please apply by Tuesday May 31, 2022. Late applications can be considered but the posts may already be filled.

IRC: Yvan SAEYS Our group studies the design and application of novel data mining and machine learning techniques, motivated by specific questions in biology and medicine.  To this end, our group combines the expertise of both strong analytical skills, exemplified by solid backgrounds in applied mathematics, compu...