LINGUIST List 12.1766

Mon Jul 9 2001

Jobs: Phonetics and Speech Perception Bavaria Germany

Editor for this issue: Heather Taylor-Loring <heatherlinguistlist.org>

Directory

1. Silke Steininger, Evaluation of Dialogue Systems: Scientific Staff Member at Ludwig Maximilians University, Bavaria Germany

Rank of Job: Scientific Staff Member
Areas Required: Evaluation of Dialogue Systems
Other Desired Areas: Usability, Script Programming
University or Organization: Ludwig Maximilians University
Department: Institute of Phonetics and Speech Perception
State or Province: Bavaria
Country: Germany
Final Date of Application: 31.7.01
Contact: Silke Steininger ksteinphonetik.uni-muenche.de

Address for Applications:
Schellingstr. 3
Munich
Bavaria 80799
Germany

LOOKING FOR A CREATIVE, EXCITING JOB IN A HUMAN-MACHINE- INTERACTION
PROJECT?

The project - SMARTKOM - aims to develop an intelligent computer
assistant, that understands verbal and nonverbal (gestures, facial
expression) input of the users and allows a relatively natural
communication between human and computer. The assistant is able to
help the users in the areas of tourist information, office
applications and home entertainment. 

The task of the institute of phonetics is the collection of data and
the evaluation of the system. For this we record subjects (with
cameras, microphones, gesture recognizer) as they use the system and
annotate this data. 

The project started at the end of 1999 and continues until the end of
2003.

USER STUDIES

We need help for our evaluation-crew. The evaluation-crew analyses how
accurate the prototypes of SmartKom function (technical evaluation)
and how different users judge the handling of the system (user
evaluation).

The job comprises the following tasks:
- creation of a criteria list for the user evaluation 
- planning and realizing of user interviews and experiments
- recruitment of subjects
- instruction of student helpers
- presentation of results at conferences and workshops
- passing on of the data to the project partners

For the user studies we can only in part orient ourselves on existing
approaches from the evaluation of dialogue systems or usability
studies - multimodal dialogue systems like SmartKom did not exist
until recently. Therefore we often have to create new
solutions. Creativity, resourcefulness, the ability to work
independently and no fear of new technology therefore would be
useful. 

The following skills are important:

- usability engineering or evaluation of dialogue systems
- realisation and analyzation of interviews and experiments
- statistics

- A university degree is mandatory 

One or more of the following additional qualifications would be
useful: 

- psychology or automatic speech processing 
- script programming (Perl)
- Linux or Windows NT
- HTML or XML
- experience with data bases (SQL)


WHAT DO WE OFFER?

- BAT IIa post
- until the end of 2003
- Ph.D. possible 

Apart from mere money we can offer:

- an interesting project,
- that looks fine in the CV 
- and where skills and contacts can be acquired in a field that is much
in demand (human-computer-interaction, multimedia, multimodal dialogue
systems)

Further information: 

http://www.dfki.de/smartkom/index.html

http://www.phonetik.uni-muenchen.de/Forschung/SmartKom/SmartKom_LMU.html


INTERESTED?

Then we are looking forward to an email :)