Doctoral fellow

Job description

The LT3 language and translation technology team at Ghent University has a full-time vacancy for a PhD researcher in the area of Natural Language Processing for research on building empathic conversational agents, funded by the Flemish Ministry of Economics, Science and Innovation in the framework of the Flemish AI research program (https://www.flandersairesearch.be/en).

Research group
The LT3 Language and Translation Technology Team is a dynamic research group at Ghent University's Department of Translation, Interpreting and Communication (https://lt3.ugent.be). The group conducts fundamental and applied research in the domain of language and translation technology and has extensive expertise in the use of machine learning for a wide range of language technology problems, int.al. anaphora resolution, irony detection, event detection, word sense disambiguation, sentiment and (multimodal) emotion detection, etc. The group has available a state of the art computing and experimentation infrastructure.


Project
As part of an ongoing initiative of the regional government to boost Artificial Intelligence in Flanders, an ambitious research program has been initiated (https://www.flandersairesearch.be/nl). In the work package on “Interaction and Cognitive Systems”, one of the goals is to simulate human dialogue in social context, allowing human-machine communication to be more effective and enjoyable for humans. Language models, powered by recent revolutions in AI, are becoming increasingly more powerful and support language generation, summarization, classification, question answering, chatbots and more. In this work, we will capitalize on recent developments in NLP build applications which focus on language and linguistic interaction, such as interactive learning with embodied agents. We will explore multimodal interaction, in which language is combined with other modalities, such as vision and tactile interaction to integrate paralinguistic cues such as prosody, gestures, affect and emotion. These will allow users to have interactions that transcend classic written conversations with interactive AI systems.
We look for a highly motivated PhD student who will be working in the LT3 team, but also in collaboration with the other research teams involved in the Flanders AI programme.


Job description

• You will be responsible for developing and evaluating new algorithms for multimodal conversational agents (knowledge of Python required);
• You will present work at regular project meetings and will publish and present research results in international peer reviewed journals and conferences;
• You will work together with PhD researchers in the LT3 team and in the cross-university Flanders AI team;

Job profile

Profile and requirements

• You hold (or will obtain during the application period) a master’s degree in Artificial Intelligence, Engineering, Computational Linguistics or another relevant area.
• You are passionate about Computational Linguistics (Natural Language Processing) and Machine Learning.
• You have excellent programming skills (at least Python).
• You have achieved outstanding academic results, and are passionate about research
• You have excellent English language skills in academic writing and presentation. Knowledge of Dutch is an advantage.
• You are comfortable with working in a team on a complex project involving multidisciplinary colleagues in different research groups.
• Previous experience with Conversational Agents (chatbots, dialogue systems), LLMs, LMMs, and personalization is an advantage.

WHAT WE CAN OFFER YOU

• We offer a full-time scholarship position in a vibrant research environment with state-of-the-art infrastructure, and in cooperation with strong research groups and industrial partners.
• We offer a full-time position as a doctoral fellow, consisting of an initial period of 12 months, which - after a positive evaluation, will be extended to a total maximum of 48 months.
• Your contract will start on September 1, 2024 at the earliest. The successful candidate will be expected to relocate to (the environment of) Ghent.
• The fellowship amount is 100% of the net salary of an AAP member in equal family circumstances. The individual fellowship amount is determined by the Department of Personnel and Organization based on family status and seniority. A grant that meets the conditions and criteria of the regulations for doctoral fellowships is considered free of personal income tax. Click here for more information about our salary scales
• All Ghent University staff members enjoy a number of benefits, such as a wide range of training and education opportunities, 36 days of holiday leave (on an annual basis for a full-time job) supplemented by annual fixed bridge days, bicycle allowance and eco vouchers. Click here for a complete overview of all the staff benefits (in Dutch).

How to apply

Please send an extended CV and motivation letter to Veronique.Hoste@ugent.be, before the closing date of July 15, 2024, but preferably as soon as possible.
For questions about the profile and the description of the profile, you can mail to Veronique.hoste@ugent.be.