The Informatics Institute of the Faculty of Science is looking for 3 PhD candidates deep learning of activities in video.

The primary goal of the three PhD projects is to perform cutting edge research in computer vision and deep learning to automatically detect activities in a multi-camera streaming video environment. Activities will be enriched by person and object detection to arrive at precise descriptions. Relevant research questions are: How can we automatically detect activities, as well as persons and objects, in cluttered scenes? What are the underlying mechanisms for spatiotemporal reasoning in video that improve activity detection? How can we enable activity detection and scene understanding from overlapping and non-overlapping camera viewpoints? The work is executed as part of the IARPA DIVA research program, together with SRI International, the University of Michigan and the University of Washington. The positions are based at the University of Amsterdam and we expect that candidates are willing to attend yearly project meetings in the USA.

• Master degree in Artificial Intelligence, Computer Science, or related field;
• excellent programming skills (the project is in Python and C/C++);
• solid mathematics foundations, especially statistics and linear algebra;
• highly motivated;
• fluent in English, both written and spoken.

Preferred starting date is September 2017.

The appointment for the PhD candidates 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 4 years) and should lead to a dissertation (PhD thesis). An educational plan will be drafted that includes attendance of courses and (international) meetings. The PhD student is also expected 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 in the first year to €2,840 in the 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 for Dutch Universities is applicable.

Some of the things we have to offer:

• competitive pay and good benefits;
• top-50 University worldwide;
• one of the best deep learning ecosystems in the world;
• interactive, open-minded and a very international city;
• excellent computing facilities.

English is the working language in the Informatics Institute. As in Amsterdam 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.

Informatics Institute

The Informatics Institute of the Faculty of Science is one of the large research institutes with the faculty, with a focus on complex information systems divided in two broad themes: 'Computational Systems' and 'Intelligent Systems.' The institute has a prominent international standing and is active in a dynamic scientific area, with a strong innovative character and an extensive portfolio of externally funded projects.

World-class research groups directly involved in deep learning are ISIS (computer vision led by Prof. A. Smeulders), AMLAB (machine learning led by Prof. M. Welling), and ILPS (information retrieval led by Prof. M. de Rijke). Examples of industry funded research labs involved in deep learning are Qualcomm-UVA (QUVA) Lab (12 PhDs/Postdocs) and Bosch-UvA DELTA Lab (11 PhDs/Postdocs).