University or Organization: Saarland University
Department: Department of Language Science and Technology
Job Location: Saarbrücken, Germany
Web Address: https://www.uni-saarland.de/en/department/lst.html
Job Title: Postdoc in Computational Linguistics
Job Rank: Post Doc

Specialty Areas: Computational Linguistics

Description:

We are looking to fill a research and teaching position in computational linguistics at the Department of Language Science and Technology at Saarland University. The position is part of the research group of Prof. Alexander Koller. It offers great flexibility in developing your own research and teaching agenda, and collaborations with other research groups are encouraged.

The position is flexible with respect to topic, but it should connect thematically with current topics of interest to the research group. These include semantic parsing, reasoning with LLMs (e.g. planning, chain-of-thought), personalized dialogue and language generation, and the use of neurosymbolic models in NLP. You should have expertise in neural and/or linguistically principled methods in computational linguistics and be willing to take an active role in shaping the research and teaching environment of the department.

The position includes a teaching load of up to four hours per week in the BSc Computational Linguistics (in German) and/or the MSc Language Science and Technology (in English). Both programs attract excellent and highly motivated students; it is not unusual for our students to publish papers at peer-reviewed conferences before graduation. The MSc students in particular are a very international crowd, with two thirds joining us from abroad. You will typically teach two seminars per semester on topics of your choice, which will allow you to motivate students to do BSc and MSc theses under your supervision.

This is a position on the German TV-L E13 scale (100% position at the postdoc level; 75% position at the PhD student level). The starting salary of a 100% TV-L E13 position is a bit over 50,000 Euros per year and increases with experience. The initial appointment will be for three years; the position can be extended up to the limits of the German law for academic contracts (WissZeitVG). The starting date could be late 2023 or early 2024; we would be willing to adapt to the time requirements of an ideal candidate.

Requirements:

We are looking for candidates who have finished, or are about to complete, an excellent PhD degree (at the postdoc level) or MSc degree (at the PhD student level) in computational linguistics, computer science, or a related discipline. You must be proficient in English (spoken and written); the ability to teach in German is a plus.

The position is primarily intended for applicants at the postdoc level, who should have demonstrated their research expertise through high-quality publications. We will consider applicants at the PhD level in exceptional cases.

About the department:

Saarland University is one of the leading centers for computational linguistics in Europe, and offers a dynamic and stimulating research environment. The Department of Language Science and Technology consists of about 100 research staff in nine research groups in the fields of computational linguistics, psycholinguistics, speech processing, and corpus linguistics.

The department is a core member of the new Research Training Group "Neuroexplicit Models of Language, Vision, and Action", which is on track to grow into one of the largest centers in the world for research on neurosymbolic models in computational linguistics and other fields of AI. It is also the centerpiece of the Collaborative Research Center 1102 "Information Density and Linguistic Encoding" and part of the Saarland Informatics Campus, which brings together multiple world-class research institutions in computer science on campus. The Saarland Informatics Campus brings together 900 researchers and 2100 students from 81 countries; SIC faculty have won 36 ERC grants.

Please see https://www.coli.uni-saarland.de/~koller/page.php?id=jobs for details on how to apply.

Application Deadline: 31-Aug-2023
Mailing Address for Applications:

Web Address for Applications: https://www.coli.uni-saarland.de/~koller/page.php?id=jobs
Contact Information:
Prof. Alexander Koller
Email: [email protected]