The IXA group invites applications for PhD studentships starting Fall 2018, for a period of three to four years.
The PhD positions are funded by the Universitry of the Basque Country UPV/EHU in a competitive call. We are ready to host and supervise the candidate, and to assist with the PhD project and application procedure. The studentships cover tuition fees and a stipend of 16,527€ per year on average (1,180€ in 14 monthly payments).
Some possible topics for the PhD, among others, are the following:
- Neural Machine Translation. Applying Deep Learning techniques for
unsupervised Machine Translation to improve MT with scarce resources
in specific domains.
- Multilingual Text Acquisition. Automatic development of semantic
processors leveraging parallel data: (i) using word alignments
traditionally used in MT (ii) using continuous word representations.
- Dialogue Systems for QA: Use previous experiences to train dialogue
management modules of chatbots, based on deep learning techniques,
with applications to community question answering.
- Vision and Language. Multimodal representations for richer semantic
interpretations: using grounded multimodal representation for word and
sentences that combine textual and visual features to acquire
background knowledge information.
- Neural Network Architectures for semantic parsing, including Word
Sense Disambiguation, Natural Language Inference (NLI and STS
datasets), with applications to community question answering.
- Domain Adaptation: Explore automatic techniques to improve the
performance of NLP tools in legal and medical domains, with emphasis
on information extraction
- Discourse and Pragmatics: Coreference and Opinion Mining. / Event
identification. /Discourse Structure and Summarization.
The procedure is roughly the following:
- Send an e-mail to <a.soroa at ehu.eus> including CV by 16th of April (see
details below).
- Applicant should be available for an interview by skype or similar if
required.
- The application deadline is 16th of May.
The CV should include degrees and grades (very important), names of two references and a brief motivation letter stating your research interests and past experience. All documents should be sent as a single PDF.
The approximate schedule is be the following:
- The candidates will agree with the supervisor a specific PhD project
by the end of April.
- The UPV/EHU publishes its decision by the end of July.
- Finally, the PhD would start in October.
Requirements ************
240 ECTS already completed with excellent grades in a computer science or linguistics related bachelor degree (obtained after January 2015). The degree certificate has to be standardized following the official Spanish Government procedure. Please check the following URL for further information:
https://www.ehu.eus/en/web/homologazioak/home
The applicant will be in the final year of an official title (master degree, etc.) that gives access to the PhD program.
Experience in NLP and deep learning preferred. Excellent programming and mathematical skills preferred. Fluent English.
Please see the following URL for more details about the call (in Spanish):
https://www.ehu.eus/es/web/ikerketaren-kudeaketa/-/pif-upv-ehu-2018
Additional Information **********************
- About IXA Research Group (http://ixa.eus/)
IXA is a research group working, on the natural language processing at the University of the Basque Country , It is a multidisciplinary group composed of 42 computer scientists and 12 linguists. We work together on algorithms, tools and linguistic resources that allow computers to process and understand human languages. Our work ranges from basic research in computational linguistics to key applications in human language technology, and covers areas such as Information Retrieval and Information Extraction, Machine Translation, Language learning, Morphology, Syntax-Morphosyntax, Lexicography-Semantics, Basic facilities and Integrations of Language Tools (XML).
- About the University of the Basque Country (https://www.ehu.eus/en/web/guest/en-home)
In a prosperous region stretching along the Atlantic coast of northern Spain, the people of the Basque Country are the custodians of one of Europe's most ancient languages and cultures. Yet, they not only have a high esteem for tradition, but are also remarkably forward-looking and have established a highly regarded industrial sector.
The region's success and scientific and technological progress are underpinned by the University of the Basque Country, a vibrant 30-year-old institution with 45,000 students, 5,000 world-class academic staff and state-of-the-art facilities. Following our motto 'Give and spread knowledge', the University of the Basque Country is an integrating institution willing to produce knowledge, experience and research in order to forward them to the general public. Our courses catalogue consists of 67 Bachelor´s Degrees in all fields of knowledge. At postgraduate level, we offer 103 official master programmes, 44 professional & expert diplomas and 71 PhD programmes.
The University of the Basque Country wishes to host an unrestricted and multicultural community. Our International Relations Office manages over 900 exchange agreements with other Spanish, European and International universities. Every year, our three campuses turn into lively melting pots where over 900 foreign students blend in with our local trainees. We take part in SICUE, the Spanish universities students´ exchange programme; ERASMUS, the most extended European mobility programme; and we furthermore have created our own exchange programmes with Latin-America (UPV/EHU-AMÉRICA LATINA) and other destinations (the USA, Canada, The Philipine Islands, New Zealand, Russia).
- About San Sebastian (https://www.sansebastianturismo.com/en/)
San Sebastián is a resort town on the Bay of Biscay in Spain’s mountainous Basque Country. It’s known for Playa de la Concha and Playa de Ondarreta, beaches framed by a picturesque bayfront promenade, and world-renowned restaurants helmed by innovative chefs. In its cobblestoned old town (Parte Vieja), upscale shops neighbor vibrant pintxo bars pairing local wines with bite-size regional specialties.