The Institute for Logic, Language and Computation (ILLC) at the University of Amsterdam invites applications for a one-year research position at the postdoc level in the Dialogue Modelling Group led by Raquel Fernández. The mission of the group is to understand dialogical interaction by developing empirically-motivated formal and computational models that can be applied to various dialogue processing tasks and to human-machine interaction.

This position is part of a larger project on Asymmetry in Conversation, funded by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) under the VIDI scheme. The exact research topic to be pursued by the successful applicant is flexible, but it must fit the general research agenda of the group, which is centred around computational semantics and pragmatics, in particular in interactive linguistic settings, including dialogue systems. The group has a wide international network of collaborators, both in academia and in industry research labs.

The successful applicant will be expected to fulfil the following tasks:

• to present intermediate research results at international workshops and conferences, and publish them in proceedings and journals;
• to collaborate with the researchers in the Dialogue Modelling Group and other relevant parts of the ILLC;
• to participate in the organisation of research activities and events at the ILLC, such as seminars and workshops.

While this is primarily a research position, the successful applicant will be expected to also make a modest contribution to teaching at the ILLC in subjects relevant to the candidate's research profile.

Prospective candidates should:

• hold or be about to obtain a PhD degree in computational linguistics, computational psycholinguistics, artificial intelligence, computer science, or a related field;
• have good programming skills;
• have a keen interest in problem solving and research, a drive to publish and the wish to learn new skills through working with or assisting in guiding PhD and MSc students;
• have good communication skills in English, both oral and written.

The successful candidate will be employed by the Faculty of Science at the University of Amsterdam on a fixed-term full-time position (38 hours per week) for a period of one year. 

Depending on experience, the gross monthly salary will range from €2,588 to €4,084 (scale 10) and will be supplemented with an 8% holiday allowance and an 8.3% end-of-year bonus. The Collective Labour Agreement for Dutch Universities applies. 

Starting date: 1 September 2018 or soon thereafter.

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

Institute for Logic, Language and Computation

The Institute for Logic, Language and Computation (ILLC) is a research institute in which researchers from the Faculty of Science and the Faculty of Humanities collaborate. It offers a very international English-speaking research environment. Research is interdisciplinary and aims at bringing together insights from various fields concerned with information and information processing, such as logic, mathematics, computer science, artificial intelligence, linguistics, computational linguistics, cognitive science, musicology, and philosophy. The institute is located in the beautiful city of Amsterdam, renowned for its historic canals, its cosmopolitan laid-back atmosphere, and its excellent connections to the rest of Europe and beyond.

http://www.illc.uva.nl/