Postdoc Position in Multilingual NLP - Sapienza University of Rome

POSTDOC POSITION IN MULTILINGUAL NLP (SEMANTIC PARSING)

Sapienza University of Rome, Italy

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

One postdoc position (1+2 years) 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 ELEXIS <http://elex.is> (2018-2022), a new European
infrastructure for electronic lexicography, and MOUSSE (2017-2022), 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/~navigli/>,
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, 6
Ph.D. students and several master research students. 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 disambiguation and semantic
parsing in arbitrary languages, 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,
Mathematics or related fields.

* Good programming skills in Python.

* 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.

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

INFORMATION

* Application deadline: 12th April 2018

* Interviews will take place via Skype in the second part of April 2018

* Starting date: as early as possible, ideally on May 2nd, 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 enquiries 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-POSTDOC-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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