closing May 9 - PhD positions in Multimodal Data Analysis for NLP

Three fully funded PhD positions in Natural Language Processing are 
available at the Unit for Natural Language Processing of the Data 
Science Institute [1] at the National University of Ireland Galway [2]. 
The positions are funded by the Insight SFI Research Centre for Data 
Analytics [3] and will be aligned with the Insight research programme on 
Multimodal Data Analysis. The scholarship comprises a tax free stipend 
of EUR 1542 per month, in addition to university fees.

1. PhD position on ‘NLP tasks in the context of multimodal and sensor data’

NLP tasks are no longer limited to the analysis of language as a single 
modality but can access multiple modalities beyond language. The 
advantage of incorporating multimodal approaches to NLP is the potential 
complementarity of the data stored across different modalities. The 
integration of signals coming from text, images, video, audio or sensor 
data has been shown to be useful for improved natural language 
understanding and generation. In this context, the PhD position will be 
concerned with innovative research into the representation and 
exploitation of multimodal and sensor data for NLP tasks.

2. PhD position on ‘Knowledge Graphs for natural language understanding 
in physical settings’

Knowledge graphs are at the core of modelling reference and inference in 
natural language understanding and multimodal reasoning. However, the 
current state of the art in knowledge graphs is incomplete and 
insufficient for truly effective natural language understanding in 
physical settings. Conversational agents (chatbots), robotics and other 
autonomous systems increasingly require an understanding of pragmatic 
knowledge, such as physical dimensions of objects and events and how 
this is referred to in language (verbalized) by human users. In this 
context, the PhD position will be concerned with innovative research 
into the extraction and use of knowledge graphs for natural language 
understanding in physical settings.

3. PhD position on ‘Leveraging textual, audio and visual modalities 
within machine translation’

Current approaches to multimodal machine translation leverage additional 
information coming from different modalities, such as text, speech or 
video. Exploiting the additional information in these modalities can be 
used to improve the generated output in a different language. This PhD 
position will focus primarily on video-guided translation, which 
exploits audio and visual modalities. In this context, the PhD position 
will be concerned with developing new models and approaches in 
video-guided machine translation beyond the state-of-the-art, with 
emphasis on real-time language processing and translation.

Candidates should:
- have a Masters degree in a relevant field of study with an emphasis on NLP
- have experience in machine learning and deep learning
- have good programming skills in Python
- enjoy working with real-world problems and large data sets
- have excellent proficiency in English and good communication skills

Please send your application (CV and cover letter in a single PDF, 
please specify your name in the file name) before the closing date of 
May 9th, 2021 to paul.buitelaar@nuigalway.ie and mihael.arcan@nuigalway.ie

[1] https://dsi.nuigalway.ie/units/unlp
[2] https://www.nuigalway.ie
[3] https://www.insight-centre.org/

Received on Friday, 30 April 2021 10:31:40 UTC