Junior Researcher Position / Ph.D. Position in Semantic Web Technologies

Job Offer: Junior Researcher / Ph.D. Position 
starting February 2014
at the Hasso-Plattner-Institute (HPI), Potsdam.

HPI is Germany’s university excellence center for IT Systems Engineering affiliated with the University of Potsdam, Germany. The Institute's founder and benefactor Professor Hasso Plattner, who is also co-founder and chairman of the supervisory board of SAP AG, has created an opportunity for students to experience a unique education in IT Systems Engineering in a professional research environment with a strong practical orientation. Research at HPI is characterized by scientific excellence and close cooperation with industry.
(for more information about HPI, cf. http://www.hpi.uni-potsdam.de/ )

Project Description:
D-WERFT (engl. ‘Digital Dockyard‘) is a national research project funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research, with the goal to integrate the value creation process of the media industry with the help of semantic technologies and Linked Open Data. This process includes media planning and production, media post-production, media distribution, media archival, and digital rights management. The project is supported by 10 German project partners from industry, education, and research, and is scheduled for 3 years starting in 2014. Within D-WERFT, HPI ist responsible for Linked Data based data integration, semantic multimedia analysis and retrieval.

Main research topics:
- Linked Data engineering
- named entity recognition and mapping
- event detection
- ontological engineering
- knowledge engineering and knowledge mining
- recommendation systems
- semantic and exploratory search
- multimedia analysis including 
--  visual concept detection, video OCR, and audio mining

How to apply:
Excellent candidates are invited to apply with: 
- detailed curriculum vitae and copies of degree certificates/transcripts, 
- publication record and writing samples/copies of relevant scientific papers 
  (e.g. thesis, etc.), letters of recommendation (2 at least),
- a statement of interest / letter of motivation.


Candidates will have:
an outstanding master‘s degree (or an equivalent university degree) in computer science or another discipline relevant for semantic technologies (as e.g. mathematics, computational linguistics, information sciences, engineering, etc.) and will target a Ph.D. degree while working on the project. We expect eagerness to participate in team work, outstanding analytical competence, strong interest in interdisciplinary research and excellent programming and communication skills. Fluency in spoken and written English is required. Language skills in German are welcome. Qualified candidates who have not yet completed their master are also encouraged to apply.

We offer: 
a creative, active, internationally renowned research group, support for publication at leading international conferences, support in pursuing a Ph.D., and an outstanding working environment in a new, technically excellent campus.  HPI is located close to Berlin, offering a wide variety of educational opportunities, recreation and tourism, and cultural events. Being directly connected to the Berlin metro rail system, HPI can be reached from Berlin in about 20 minutes. Both Potsdam and Berlin are very livable cities, and have large student and international communities.

Compensation is based on TV-L 13 (federal salary rate). HPI is committed to promoting the careers of women and therefore looks forward to receiving applications by female candidates. HPI also positively welcomes applications from suitably qualified disabled people. 

Please send your application in PDF format with the subject heading ‘Application for PhD position‘ via email or via conventional mail to the following contact:


Contact and application:
Harald Sack
Hasso-Plattner-Institut für Softwaresystemtechnik GmbH
Universität Potsdam
Prof.-Dr.-Helmert-Str. 2-3
D-14482 Potsdam, Germany

phone:  +49 (0)331-5509-527
fax:  +49 (0)331-5509-325
email:  harald.sack@hpi.uni-potsdam.de
web:    http://bit.ly/HaraldSack-HPI

Received on Thursday, 2 January 2014 15:29:07 UTC