The Informatics Institute (IvI) of the University of Amsterdam (UvA) invites applications for a PhD position for four years. The position is part of the project 'Re-SEARCH: Contextual Search for Scientific Research Data', which is jointly funded by Elsevier and NWO.

Project description

Scientific, technical and medical knowledge is built on research data. It increasingly plays a similar role in the social sciences and humanities. Research datasets are either deposited by researchers or automatically extracted from publications. The Re-SEARCH project proposes to create open source search and recommendation solutions for research datasets so as to enable their re-use.

Within the Re-SEARCH project, the PhD candidate that we are looking to hire will work on search technology for dataset retrieval. The PhD candidate will be based at UvA but the team as a whole will have regular meetings at Elsevier’s Amsterdam offices.

This PhD position is focused on learning to rank methods for research datasets. You will design and evaluate algorithms aimed at ranking research datasets in response to a query or as part of recommendations to users interested in a scientific topic. You will focus on unsupervised or weakly supervised scenarios. You can build on semantic enrichments as well as insights in research dataset use and user behaviour developed within the team.

Tasks

• Conduct computer science research with a special focus on academic search and research data;
• publish in top tier conferences and journals in relevant areas;
• provide teaching assistance (10%);
• complete a PhD thesis.

• MSc degree in computer science or artificial intelligence;
• a demonstrable background in information retrieval and machine learning;
• excellent software engineering skills, English language skills, social skills, and team spirit.

The candidates should appreciate an international and highly interdisciplinary environment in which academic-industrial collaboration is central.

The appointment will be on a temporary basis for a period of 4 years (initial appointment will be for a period of 18 months and after satisfactory evaluation it can be extended for a total duration of 48 months) and should lead to a dissertation (PhD thesis). We will draft an educational plan that includes attendance of courses and (international) meetings. We also expect you to assist in teaching of bachelor and master students.

Based on a full-time appointment (38 hours per week) the gross monthly salary will range from €2,222 (first year) to €2,840 (last year). There are also secondary benefits, such as 8% holiday allowance per year and the end of year allowance of 8.3%. The Collective Labour Agreement of Dutch Universities is applicable.

Among other things, we offer:

• competitive pay and excellent benefits;
• extremely friendly working environment;
• high-level of interaction;
• international environment (10+ nationalities in the group);
• access to high-end computing facilities (cluster with 4,000+ cores);
• new building located near the city center (10 minutes by bicycle) of one of Europe’s most beautiful and lively cities.

Since Amsterdam is a very international city where almost everybody speaks and understands English, candidates need not be afraid of the language barrier.

University of Amsterdam

With over 5,000 employees, 30,000 students and a budget of more than 600 million euros, the University of Amsterdam (UvA) is an intellectual hub within the Netherlands. Teaching and research at the UvA are conducted within seven faculties: Humanities, Social and Behavioural Sciences, Economics and Business, Law, Science, Medicine and Dentistry. Housed on four city campuses in or near the heart of Amsterdam, where disciplines come together and interact, the faculties have close links with thousands of researchers and hundreds of institutions at home and abroad.  

The UvA’s students and employees are independent thinkers, competent rebels who dare to question dogmas and aren’t satisfied with easy answers and standard solutions. To work at the UvA is to work in an independent, creative, innovative and international climate characterised by an open atmosphere and a genuine engagement with the city of Amsterdam and society.

http://www.uva.nl/en/home

Informatics Institute (IvI)

The Informatics Institute (IvI) is one of the large research institutes within the Faculty of Science, with a focus on complex information systems divided into two broad themes: 'Computational Systems' and 'Intelligent Systems'. The institute has a prominent international standing and an extensive portfolio of externally funded projects. 

http://ivi.uva.nl/