Pre-Ph.D.+Ph.D. Position in Multilingual NLP at the Sapienza University of Rome

PRE-PH.D.+PH.D. RESEARCH POSITION IN MULTILINGUAL NLP (SEMANTIC PARSING)

Sapienza University of Rome, Italy

Department of Computer Science

One pre-Ph.D. research position (with the possibility of starting a Ph.D.
in 2018 on the same salary with a privileged track) in Natural Language
Processing is open in the Linguistic Computing Laboratory (
http://lcl.uniroma1.it), Department of Computer Science of the Sapienza
University of Rome.

The position is part of a new 5-year ERC Consolidar Grant funded by the
European Research Council (ERC) and headed by prof. Roberto Navigli
<http://wwwusers.di.uniroma1.it/%7Enavigli/>, following the success of his
MultiJEDI ERC Starting Grant (http://multijedi.org). The successful
candidate will participate in a frontier research project aimed at
designing and investigating novel neural network architectures for
multilingual disambiguation and semantic parsing and will work in the
vibrant environment of a leading and highly-active international research
team comprising 3 faculty members, 1 post-doc and 6 Ph.D. students. The
group has published dozens of papers in top-tier venues
<http://wwwusers.di.uniroma1.it/%7Enavigli/pubs.html> in the field of
computational linguistics and artificial intelligence.

Interested students and collaborators in the research group have the option
to interact with Babelscape <http://babelscape.com>, a Sapienza startup
company founded by prof. Navigli which brings research in multilingual
Natural Language Processing to the market and makes research projects, such
as the award-winning BabelNet <http://babelnet.org>, sustainable in the
long term. Babelscape is currently working for key players in different
fields, including multinational companies, and national and international
public bodies. Around 15 developers and researchers are working in the
company.

REQUIREMENTS/QUALIFICATIONS

The successful candidate will work actively on new directions in deep
learning and neural networks for multilingual lexical semantic tasks such
as Word Sense Disambiguation, Entity Linking and semantic parsing in
arbitrary languages, starting from successful approaches and resources for
multilingual lexical semantics such as BabelNet <http://babelnet.org>
(winner of the 2017 Artificial Intelligence prominent paper award),
the Multilingual
Wikipedia Bitaxonomy <http://wibitaxonomy.org>, SensEmbed
<http://lcl.uniroma1.it/sensembed>, NASARI <http://lcl.uniroma1.it/nasari>
explicit and embedded vectors, state-of-the-art neural Word Sense
Disambiguation
<http://wwwusers.di.uniroma1.it/%7Enavigli/pubs/EMNLP_2017_Raganatoetal.pdf>
and train-o-matic <http://trainomatic.org>.


The candidate is expected to have:

* a M.Sc. or equivalent in Computer Science, Computational Linguistics/NLP,
Mathematics or related fields.

* Good programming skills in Python and/or Java (there is the option to
attend a Python/Java course at Sapienza on the first contract year).

* Fluent English. Knowledge of other languages (especially Asian languages)
is more than welcome. Knowledge of Italian is NOT a requirement.

* Knowledge of current neural network models, especially recurrent neural
networks such as LSTMs, and tools for neural networks (e.g. Tensorflow,
Keras, Torch, Theano, etc.) is a plus.

* Publications in Computational Linguistics, participation in summer
schools and other experiences are a plus.

INFORMATION

* Application deadline: early *October 2017*

* Interviews will take place via Skype around the end of October/beginning
of November

* Starting date: as early as possible, ideally on December 1st, 2017

* Duration: 1+3 years

* Salary: 25000 euros per annum. Note that this type of research contract
is exempt from taxes, while including social insurance (25000 euros per
annum corresponds to around 1560 euros net per month).

HOW TO APPLY

Information can be requested by email to Roberto Navigli (
navigli@di.uniroma1.it). The application requires a brief motivation
letter, a detailed CV and contact details for up to three references.
Please include the job reference [LCL1-2017] in the subject line.

*Candidates attending EMNLP this week are welcome for an informal chat on
the position.*

ABOUT THE SAPIENZA UNIVERSITY OF ROME

The Sapienza University of Rome is a seven-century-old university in the
heart of Rome. It is one of the largest universities in Europe, with around
110,000 students. Its Faculty of Information Engineering, Informatics and
Statistics (that includes the Department of Computer Science) is one of the
youngest, most energetic and scientifically active environments at
Sapienza. Sapenza has a portfolio of 30 ERC grants
<http://www.uniroma1.it/progettiercsapienza>, 5 of which in the Department
of Computer Science. Sapienza is an equal opportunity employer.

ABOUT THE SAPIENZA COMPUTER SCIENCE DEPARTMENT

The Department of Computer Science is a modern and well-equipped research
institution with a top-class faculty and a strong Ph.D. program
<http://phd.di.uniroma1.it/>. The Department comprises 44 faculty members,
15 postdocs and around 30 Ph.D. students. The successful candidate will be
based in Rome, one of the most beautiful cities in the world. The
Department is situated just across the road from the main University
Campus, close to a student area with lots of cafes, bars, restaurants, and
only a short bus ride from the city centre. Candidates should not be afraid
of the language barrier, as Italians are in general very friendly. English
is spoken widely throughout the Department.


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Roberto Navigli
Dipartimento di Informatica
Sapienza University of Rome
Viale Regina Elena 295b (building G, second floor)
00161 Roma Italy
Phone: +39 0649255161 - Fax: +39 06 49918301
Home Page: http://wwwusers.di.uniroma1.it/~navigli
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