PhD-level Researchers in Language Technology or Computational Linguistics

The newly established Research Training Group "Adaptive Information Preparation from Heterogeneous Sources" (AIPHES) at the Technische Universität Darmstadt and at the Ruprecht -Karls- University Heidelberg is filling several positions for three years, starting as soon as possible: 


PhD-level Researchers in Language Technology or Computational Linguistics 


The positions provide the opportunity to obtain a doctoral degree with an emphasis within one of the following guiding themes: 


A3: Opinion and Sentiment - extrapropositional aspects of discourse (Univ. of Heidelberg) 
B1: Structured summaries of complex contents (TU Darmstadt) 

B2: Content selection based on linked lexical resources (TU Darmstadt) 
D1: Multi-level models of information quality in online scenarios (TU Darmstadt) 
D2: Manual and Automatic Quality Assessment of Summaries from Heterogeneous Sources (TU Darmstadt) 
The funding follows the guidelines of the DFG, and the positions are paid according to the E13 public service pay scale. 


The goal of AIPHES is to conduct innovative research on multi-document summarization in a cross-disciplinary context. To that end, methods in computational linguistics, natural language processing, machine learning, network analysis, and automated quality assessment will be developed. AIPHES will investigate a novel summarization scenario for information preparation from heterogeneous sources. There will be close interaction with end users who prepare textual documents in an online editorial office, and who should therefore profit from the results of AIPHES. In-depth knowledge in one of the above areas is desirable but not a prerequisite. 


Participating research groups at the Technische Universität Darmstadt are Knowledge Engineering (Prof. Fürnkranz), Ubiquitous Knowledge Processing (Prof. Gurevych, Dr. Eckle-Kohler), Algorithmics (Prof. Weihe), Language Technology (Prof. Biemann), Multimedia Communications (Dr. Rensing). Participants at the Ruprecht Karls University Heidelberg are the Institute for Computational Linguistics (Prof. Frank) and the Natural Language Processing Group (Prof. Strube) of Heidelberg Institute for Theoretical Studies (HITS). Cooperating partners are the Institute for Communication and Media of the University of Applied Sciences Darmstadt and other partners in the area of online media. 


AIPHES will emphasize close contact between students and their advisors, have regular joint meetings, a co-supervision by professors and younger scientists in the research groups, and an intensive exchange as part of the research and qualification program. The training group has the goal of publishing its results at leading scientific conferences and will actively support its doctoral researchers in this endeavor. The software that will be developed in the course of AIPHES should be put under the open source Apache Software License 2.0 if possible. Moreover, the research papers and datasets should be published with open access models. 


Prerequisites 
We are looking for exceptionally qualified candidates with a degree in Computer Science, Computational Linguistics, or a related study program. We expect ability to work independently, personal commitment, team and communication abilities, as well as the willingness to cooperate in a multi-disciplinary team. Desirable is experience in scientific work. Applicants should be able to work with German-language texts, and, if necessary, to acquire German language skills during the training program. We specifically invite applications of women. Among those equally qualified, handicapped applicants will receive preferential consideration. International applications are particularly encouraged. 


The Department of Computer Science of TU Darmstadt is regularly ranked among the top ones in respective rankings of German universities. Its unique research initiative "Knowledge Discovery in the Web" emphasizes natural language processing, text mining, machine learning, as well as scalable infrastructures for assessment and aggregation of knowledge. The Institute for Computational Linguistics (ICL) of the Ruprecht Karls University Heidelberg is one of the large centers for computational linguistics both in Germany and internationally. The ICL and the NLP department of the HITS jointly run the graduate program "Semantic Processing" with an integrated research training group "Coherence in language processing: Semantics beyond the sentence", which has a close connection to the topics in computational linguistics of AIPHES. 


Applications should include 


a motivational letter that refers to one of the above listed guiding themes, 
a CV with information about the applicant's scientific work, 
certifications of study and work experience, 
as well as a thesis or other publications in electronic form. 
They should be submitted until March 23th, 2015 to the spokesperson of the research training group, Prof. Dr. Iryna Gurevych (Fachbereich Informatik, Hochschulstr. 10, 64289 Darmstadt) using the e-mail address apply-for-aiphes(a-t)ukp.informatik.tu-darmstadt.de. The interviews may start any time. The positions are open until filled.