Postdoc Position in Multilingual NLP/IR - Sapienza University of Rome

POSTDOC POSITION IN MULTILINGUAL NLP AND INFORMATION RETRIEVAL

Sapienza University of Rome, Italy

Department of Computer Science (first-ranked Italian Department of
Excellence)

One postdoc position (1+2 years) at the intersection of Natural Language
Processing and Information Retrieval is open in the Linguistic Computing
Laboratory (http://lcl.uniroma1.it), Department of Computer Science of the
Sapienza University of Rome (another postdoc position in NLP is also open,
with deadline April 12th
<https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/semantic-web/2018Mar/0101.html>).

The position is part of MOUSSE (2017-2022), a 5-year ERC Consolidator
Grant funded
by the European Research Council (ERC) and headed by prof. Roberto Navigli
<http://wwwusers.di.uniroma1.it/~navigli/>, following the success of his
MultiJEDI ERC Starting Grant (http://multijedi.org). Innovative work at the
intersection between NLP and IR will be carried out in collaboration with prof.
Gabriella Pasi <http://www.ir.disco.unimib.it/people/pasi-gabriella>,
University of Milano-Bicocca. The successful candidate will participate in
a frontier research project aimed at designing and investigating novel
semantic and neural representations of text which enable computing
multilingual similarity, and semantic personalization and recommendation *of
search results across languages*. The postdoc will work in the vibrant
environment of a leading and highly-active international research team
comprising 3 faculty members, 1 post-doc, 6 Ph.D. students and several
master research students, as well as with research visits to prof. Pasi's
research group in Milan. The group has published dozens of papers in
top-tier venues <http://wwwusers.di.uniroma1.it/~navigli/pubs.html> in the
field of computational linguistics and artificial intelligence.

Collaborators in the research group also 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 20 developers and researchers currently work in the company.

REQUIREMENTS/QUALIFICATIONS

The successful candidate will work actively on novel directions in deep
learning and neural networks for multilingual semantic representation of
text and retrieval and personalization of textual search results, and
will co-supervise
Ph.D. students in the group on the topic. The candidate will innovate the
field while at the same time taking advantage of successful approaches and
resources for multilingual lexical semantics such as BabelNet
<http://babelnet.org> (winner of the 2017 Artificial Intelligence prominent
paper award and featured in The Guardian
<https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/feb/23/oxford-english-dictionary-can-worlds-biggest-dictionary-survive-internet>
and Time magazine
<http://wwwusers.di.uniroma1.it/~navigli/img/Redefining_the_modern_dictionary.png>),
the Multilingual Wikipedia Bitaxonomy <http://wibitaxonomy.org>,
sense-based embedded representations (SensEmbed
<http://lcl.uniroma1.it/sensembed>), and sense-based lexical, semantic and
embedded vectors (NASARI <http://lcl.uniroma1.it/nasari>), state-of-the-art
neural Word Sense Disambiguation
<http://wwwusers.di.uniroma1.it/~navigli/pubs/EMNLP_2017_Raganatoetal.pdf>
and train-o-matic <http://trainomatic.org>.

The candidate is expected to have:

* a Ph.D. or equivalent in Computer Science, Computational Linguistics/NLP,
Information Retrieval, Mathematics or related fields.

* Good programming skills in Python and/or Java.

* Fluent English. Knowledge of other 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, PyTorch, etc.).

* Publications in top-tier venues in the field of Computational Linguistics
and/or Information Retrieval.

* Experience in Ph.D. student supervision is a plus.

INFORMATION

* Application deadline: 30th April 2018

* Interviews will take place via Skype in *May* 2018

* Starting date: as early as possible, ideally in *June or July* 2018

* Duration: 1+2 years

* Salary: 32000 euros per annum. Note that this type of research contract
is exempt from taxes, while including social insurance (32000 euros per
annum corresponds to around 2000 euros net per month).

HOW TO APPLY

Informal inquiries can be sent by email to prof. 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 [LCL-POSTDOC2-2018] in the subject line.

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/>. It is a winner of the “department of
excellence” national grant in computer science (ranked first among hundreds
of candidates, among which only 3 departments in the field obtained the
grant), with 6.5 million euros to be spent in infrastructures, positions
and grants in the upcoming 5 years. The Department comprises 44 faculty
members (with 5 ERC grants), 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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