The Cognitive Science & Artificial Intelligence department at Tilburg University (https://csai.nl/) is looking for an enthusiastic colleague for a PhD project in dialogue management and conversational interactions between humans and embodied conversational agents in virtual reality. The candidate should have knowledge of Dutch and English, and be interdisciplinary and creative in developing computational linguistics solutions. The PhD position is for four years fulltime. The PhD student will be an academic member of the department, will publish in journals and conference proceedings, and will generally support the research and vision of the department.

The successful PhD candidate holds a (research) master in a relevant area and is expected to have an academic mindset with an entrepreneurial interest, and is supposed to be enthusiastic, creative, and solution-driven. The candidate is comfortable with working in a multidisciplinary research team, has an excellent command of Dutch and English and good professional communication skills. Specifically, the candidate has a strong background in areas such as cognitive science, computer science, data science, engineering, computational linguistics and virtual, mixed or augmented reality.

Fixed-term contract: 4 years.

The selected candidates will start with a contract for one year, which – upon a positive outcome of the evaluation – will continue in a contract for the remaining three years. The selected candidate is expected to have written a PhD thesis by the end of the contract (which may be based on publications).

Tilburg University is rated among the top of Dutch employers and has excellent terms of employment. The collective labor agreement of Dutch University applies. The PhD candidates will be ranked in the Dutch university job ranking system (UFO) as a PhD-student (promovendus) with a starting salary of € 2,266 gross per month in the first year, up to € 2,897 in the fourth year (amounts fulltime).

The university offers very good fringe benefits, such as a holiday allowance of 8% and an end-of-year bonus of 8.3% (annually), an options model for terms and conditions of employment and reimbursement of moving expenses. Tilburg University provides support in finding accommodation (for foreign employees). Candidates from outside the Netherlands may qualify for a (temporary) tax-free allowance equal to 30% of their taxable salary. The university will apply for such an allowance on their behalf.

The School and the department

The Cognitive Science and Artificial Intelligence department at Tilburg University is part of the Tilburg School of Humanities and Digital Sciences. The department emphasizes innovative cutting-edge research in those areas of cognitive science that bring together psychological and computational theories and methodologies. The group is responsible for the Bachelor and the Master program Cognitive Science & Artificial Intelligence, is co-responsible for the university-wide data science Master program Data Science & Society, and is affiliated with the Jheronimus Academy of Data Science (http://www.jads.nl). Researchers in the Cognitive Science and Artificial Intelligence track have access to computer clusters, experimental lab facilities, and the virtual and mixed reality DAF Technology Lab and its sensing technologies (https://www.tilburguniversity.edu/campus/experiencing-virtual-reality/). Moreover, researchers play an important role in Mind Labs (http://www.mind-labs.eu), an initiative that fosters collaborations between knowledge institutions and corporations in the field of interactive technologies and behavior.

Tilburg School of Humanities and Digital Sciences