LINGUIST List 15.945

Sat Mar 20 2004

Jobs: Dialogue Systems: Researcher, Stanford U, USA

Editor for this issue: Tomoko Okuno <tomokolinguistlist.org>

Directory

1. lcavedon, Dialogue Systems: Researcher, Stanford University, CA, USA

University or Organization: Stanford University
Department: Center for the Study of Language and Information
Rank of Job: Researcher
Specialty Areas: Cognitive Science, Computational Linguistics, Dialogue Systems

Description:

The Computational Semantics Laboratory at Stanford's Center for the
Study of Language and Information (CSLI), Stanford University, is
seeking a Research Scientist to work on multimodal dialogue systems,
starting in May of 2004 or as soon as possible thereafter. The
position is initially for 1 year, renewable for up to 3 years
(contingent on renewed funding) and carries a salary in the range of
$70,000-$85,000, depending on qualifications and experience.
Candidates who may be more appropriate for a more senior appointment
are encouraged to contact us directly and may be considered at a
higher salary.

The ideal candidate would be a Computational Linguist with an interest
in the computational semantics and pragmatics of dialogue. The
position requires a Ph.D. in natural language processing, artificial
intelligence, cognitive science, or a related field. Applicants should
have a demonstrated capacity to define and implement a research plan,
and to conduct individual and collaborative research in line with the
dialogue-systems projects being undertaken at CSLI. An ability to lead
implementation of techniques will be highly regarded.

A focus of the position involves modeling dialogue context, and using
context to improve language understanding and error resolution. The
successful candidate will have a track-record in building dialogue
systems, with a background of publication in a relevant research area.
Specific research interests could include:
- turn and interaction management;
- semantics of multimodal communications;
- priming ASR language models from dialogue context;
- using context to interpret fragments, resolve errors, generating
 appropriate clarification questions;
- use of ontologies, knowledge-bases, and task-models in language
 understanding or dialogue modeling and management;
- plan-based or probabilistic models of tasks and processes and
 their role in dialogue context;
- architectures for dialogue management systems.

The successful candidate will work with faculty, postdoctoral, and
student researchers in the Dialogue Systems Group at CSLI to develop
core infrastructure for natural multimodal conversational systems for
a range of interactions and applications. The CSLI dialogue management
system is based on the information-state approach to task-oriented
dialogue; it is implemented mainly in Java and is designed to interact
with a number of third-party components for speech recognition,
parsing, and speech synthesis.

The CSLI Dialogue Systems Group consists of about thirteen people, and
is involved in a number of projects involving close collaboration with
numerous academic institutes, government agencies such as NASA,
various commercial partners, and other Stanford departments. Current
projects include: control of in-car devices; assistance for physical
meeting spaces; intelligent tutoring systems; command-and-control of
teams of robotic devices.

Applicants should submit a letter of application and a full resume or
curriculum vitae with names and email addresses of at least three
references. Please contact Stanley Peters and/or Lawrence Cavedon
<peters,lcavedoncsli.stanford.edu> for further information.

Stanford University is an equal opportunity, affirmative action
employer.


	

Address for Applications:

	Attn: Lawrence Cavedon
	CSLI, Cordura Hall
	210 Panama St
	Stanford, CA 94305
	United States of America 
Position is open until filled.


Contact Information:
	Lawrence Cavedon.
	Email: lcavedoncsli.stanford.edu
	Tel: 1-650-725-2318
	Website: http://www-csli.stanford.edu/semlab/

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