Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen
THREE MARIE CURIE POSITIONS for Early Stage Researchers
in Computational Linguistics & Language Technology
Application deadline: May 15, 2010
Envisaged starting date: September 1, 2010
The Department of Computational and General Linguistics at Tübingen University is inviting applications for three Marie Curie Early Stage Researchers for a period of 24 months.
The positions involve participation in the EU Marie Curie Initial Training Network CLARA (Common Language Resources and their Applications), receiving funding from European Commission's 7th Framework Programme (http://ec.europa.eu/research/mariecurieactions/, http://clara.uib.no). Applicants cannot be German citizens, except if the applicants have legally resided and had their main activity in a non–associated third country for at least three of the last four years immediately prior to this employment. Further, applicants must not have resided or performed their main activity in Germany more than 12 months in the 3 year period immediately prior to the start date of the scholarship. For a full list of mobility criteria, see ftp://ftp.cordis.europa.eu/pub/fp7/docs/fp7-mga-annex3intramulti_en.pdf
The specific positions involve participation in the CLARA subprojects Intelligent Computer-Assisted Language Learning,Treebanks and Finite State Techniques.
INTELLIGENT COMPUTER-ASSISTED LANGUAGE LEARNING (ICALL): This two year position involves participation in the project "Connecting ICALL Research and Development to Foreign Language Teaching Needs". The project researches how effective use of NLP for Intelligent Language Tutoring Systems (ILTS) can be informed by Second Language Acquisition research and Foreign Language Teaching practice. On the theoretical side, this includes a broad spectrum of research directions which can be explored, while on the practical side we envisage integration of the results into a UIMA-based ILTS architecture (cf., e.g., http://purl.org/dm/papers/amaral-meurers-ziai-10.html).
TREEBANKS: This two year position involves participation in the project "Linguistic Analysis for Treebank Annotation". The overall aim of this subproject is to specify a common core of syntactic and semantic features for a range of languages (Czech, English, German, Slovak, and others). Different annotation schemes will be tested and validated by performing annotation of texts for these languages, providing as the final product annotated corpora (treebanks) for both linguistic research and statistical language learning, as well as creating NLP tools (i.e. tools for automatic syntactic and semantic analysis).
FINITE-STATE TECHNIQUES: This two year position involves participation in the project "Finite-state Parsing Methods". Methods using finite-state transducers (FSTs) have proven to be a general framework for describing morphological and phrase level processing of natural languages and provide a technically uniform development and implementation platform. The aim of this project is to deepen understanding of these methods and develop new applications for NLP tasks such as shallow parsing and information extraction. One of the directions to be investigated is to combine rule-base models and probabilistic methods through the use of weighted FSTs.
The CLARA network offers an intensive research exchange programme between 16 participating institutions. While staying with the host institution for most of the time, the programme allows for a shorter stay at a second academic or industrial partner institution (secondment). The successful candidate will be expected to partake actively in training activities organised by CLARA. This includes summer schools, seminars and courses organised locally and at other network institutions.
The salary of an Early Stage Researcher is set in accordance with the regulations of the Marie Curie Initial Training Network within the European Commission's 7th Framework Programme (see ftp://ftp.cordis.europa.eu/pub/fp7/docs/fp7-mga-annex3intramulti_en.pdf), the German labor laws and Tübingen University regulations. The maximum salary under these regulations is EUR 29,000 per year (subject to state taxation, social and health insurance and social fund deductions) plus a monthly mobility allowance of 508 Euro (for single persons) or 812 Euro (for families) as well as a taxable travel allowance of 1,400 Euro per year and a one-time career exploratory allowance of 2000 Euro. Additional, non-salaried, non-taxable contributions toward moving and travel to CLARA events and conferences are available from CLARA funds.
For further information about the positions, please contact Prof. Dr. Erhard Hinrichs (eh at sfs.uni-tuebingen.de) or Prof. Dr. Detmar Meurers (dm at sfs.uni-tuebingen.de).
For administrative or practical information, such as the level of living expenses in Tübingen, please contact Mrs. Cornelia Stoll (cornelia.stoll at uni-tuebingen.de). Information about the Department of Computational and General Linguistics can be found on the web at http://www.sfs.uni-tuebingen.de/
Applications should be emailed to cornelia.stoll at uni-tuebingen.de or mailed to
Mrs. Cornelia Stoll Seminar für Sprachwissenschaft Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen Wilhelmstr. 19 72074 Tübingen Germany
Please submit the following application materials:
- A curriculum vitae including the following information:
- Name, place and date of birth, gender and address information.
- Nationality (or nationalities) and record of residence (countries
and periods of residence in those) for the past 3 years.
- List of academic degrees obtained. For each degree, give the title
in the original language and in English, the awarding institution
and date. Clearly indicate which degrees formally entitle you to
embark on a doctorate, and which degrees constitute a doctorate,
if applicable.
- Description of research experience after Master's degree, with
calculation in full-time equivalents (see also
https://clara.uib.no/vacancies/vacancies/
- A list of topics covered in your studies, other relevant knowledge
and activities in relevant research areas.
- Positions held and other relevant work experience.
- A list of publications.
- A sample of relevant written work (e.g., research paper or thesis,
preferably in English).
- Copies of high school and university certificates and diplomas, and
transcripts of courses taken.
- Contact information of two referees.
- A statement of research interests related to the current
application.
Women are particularly encouraged to apply.