Editor for this issue: Sarah Murray <sarah
linguistlist.org>
University or Organization: University of Twente Department: Computer Science / TKI research group Rank of Job: Ph.D. Student Specialty Areas: Computational Linguistics, Language generation, Multimodal Interfaces Required Language(s): Dutch (Code = DUT) Description: The Language, Knowledge and Interaction (TKI) research group of the University of Twente (http://parlevink.cs.utwente.nl/) is a multidisciplinary group of about 35 enthusiastic researchers in the fields of multimodal human-computer interaction, language and speech technology, virtual reality and agent technology. The group is currently looking for a Ph.D. student, fulltime, (4 years) for the project ''Interactive Multimodal Output Generation'' (IMOGEN) Job opening URL: http://www.cs.utwente.nl/~theune/vacancy/ IMOGEN project description The Interactive Multimodal Output Generation (IMOGEN) project aims at the development and implementation of efficient new models for the generation of multimodal output combining language, speech and graphics.A module will be developed for information presentation in a multimodal question-answering system, where the information to be presented is (partially) provided by a QA-component as the result of a user's query. The IMOGEN project is a cooperation between the universities of Tilburg and Twente. It consists of three related subprojects. The first subproject is carried out at the University of Twente (TKI) and aims at the development of an adaptive multimodal generation module. The second and third subprojects are carried out at Tilburg University, and focus on prosody and evaluation respectively. During the project There will be regular meetings alternating between Tilburg and Twente. IMOGEN is funded by the Dutch Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO), as part of the new national research program IMIX: Interactive Multi-modal Information eXtraction (http://www.nwo.nl/imix).Other projects in this program are aimed at speech recognition and QA using machine learning or parsing. The results from the different IMIX projects will be integrated in a common demonstrator. Ph.D. position (four years) The Ph.D. student will work on the IMOGEN subproject focusing on multimodal, adaptive output generation. As a starting point, an existing language generation system for Dutch may be used. This will have to be extended with a modality choice model determining the most appropriate modalities or combination of modalities for an effective information presentation. A further extension is to make modality choice and language generation adaptive to certain properties of the current situation (and possibly the user). The Ph.D. student will also be responsible for linking together the different components of the multimodal generation system (including visualisation and speech synthesis,subproject 2). The research will culminate in the writing and defense of a Ph.D. thesis. The Ph.D. student will be stationed at the University of Twente (TKI Research Group) and will be enrolled in the national Dutch Graduate School SIKS (School of Information and Knowledge Systems). Applicants should have a Master's degree in computer science, computational linguistics, or cognitive science. Programming experience is required. Experience with language generation or multimodal interfaces is a pro. Applicants should have, or be willing to develop, active knowledge of spoken and written Dutch, the target language within IMIX. The selected candidate will get a four year contract (full-time) as a Ph.D. student, with a gross monthly salary of EUR 1683 in the first year, increasing to EUR 2258 in the fourth year. The target starting date is November 1, 2003. The University of Twente is an equal opportunities employer. For more information, contact Mariet Theune. NB: contact persons between 17-29 September are Emiel Krahmer (E.J.KrahmerMail to author|Respond to list|Read more issues|LINGUIST home page|Top of issueuvt.nl / +31.13.4663070) for information about IMOGEN, or Anton Nijholt (anijholt
cs.utwente.nl / +31.40.4893686) for information about doing a Ph.D. at TKI. Address for Applications: Attn: Dr M. Theune University of Twente P.O. Box 217 Enschede, 7500 AE Netherlands Applications are due by 03-Oct-2003 Contact Information: Mariet Theune Email: theune
cs.utwente.nl Tel: +31.40.4894311 Fax: +31.53.4893503 Website: http://parlevink.cs.utwente.nl/