The Amsterdam Business School (ABS), one of the two schools of the Faculty of Economics and Business, has a vacancy for a PhD candidate in Text Analytics.

This PhD project will focus on developing new methods and tools in Text Analytics (aka Natural Language Processing and Machine Learning) that can be applied on multi-lingual, noisy, user-generated textual data as they appear in incident and accident reports in aviation and maritime, but also on multi-lingual, formal texts, as they appear in procedural descriptions. The goal is to mine this text and identify human factors and how they contribute to risk, in different contexts.
The PhD project is part of a Horizon2020, multi-million project named SAFEMODE. The consortium of the project constitutes 34 organizations, including universities, corporations in aviation and maritime, and public organizations such as the Eurocontrol and the Dutch National Aerospace Laboratory. The goal of the overall project is to support safety in aviation and maritime in an era that transportation radically changes with strong human-machine interactions.
The PhD project will lead part of the consortium, with the following goals:

1. Evaluation of state-of-the-art data and text mining techniques for extraction of data features from occurrence reports and safety-related data.
2. Development of data and text mining methods and tools to support effective analysis and categorization of safety occurrence reports, and safety-relevant human performance and contextual data.

The developed methods and tools should be able to scale to large volumes of data and occurrence reports and provide multi-language support for the processing of textual data from a variety of EU sources.

• A Master’s degree (MSc) in the area of Artificial Intelligence, Data Science, or Computer Science;
• interest (and preferably experience) in natural language processing, machine and deep learning, and knowledge engineering and representation;
• well-developed analytical skills, creativity, precision, self-motivation, and perseverance;
• the drive to publish in top-level academic journals and conference in the field of artificial intelligence/data science, natural language processing, and operations management;
• the drive and ability to work in an inter-disciplinary project;
• the drive and ability to develop and deliver open source software and data resources;
• excellent mastery of both written and spoken English.

We offer a challenging job with ample opportunity for personal development in an attractive international work environment. ABS is a growing, research driven business school at an internationally recognized university that has the ambition to become a leading international player in the field of management research and education. ABS is located in the heart of Amsterdam, the cultural and financial capital of the Netherlands. Amsterdam offers a cosmopolitan living environment with excellent connections to the rest of the world.
You will be appointed for an initial period of 18 months with a possibility to extend it for another 2,5 years, pending positive evaluation. As part of your contract, you will spend 20% of your time on teaching. You will be classified as PhD candidate (promovendus) in the Dutch University job-ranking system (UFO), providing a gross monthly starting salary of €2,325 in the first year (which increases to €2,972 in the final year) with an additional end-of-year bonus (8,3%) and holiday allowance (8%), in accordance with the Collective Labour Agreement of Dutch Universities.

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

Faculty of Economics and Business

The Faculty of Economics and Business (FEB) of the University of Amsterdam (UvA) provides academic courses for more than 5,000 students in Economics and Business, Actuarial Sciences, Econometrics & Operations Research, Economics of Taxation, and a variety of post-doctoral courses. The Faculty also conducts research programmes in many specialist areas and employs about 400 people. The FEB has an internationally acclaimed profile and is located in the heart of Amsterdam. FEB consists of the Amsterdam Business School and the Amsterdam School of Economics (ASE). 

The Amsterdam Business School (ABS) has almost 3,000 students and the equivalent of 120 full-time academic staff.
Six sections (Accounting, Entrepreneurship & Innovation, Finance, Leadership & Management, International Strategy & Marketing, and Operations Management) conduct research that is published in prestigious international journals. They also provide various degree programs including a BSc program and six MSc programs, a wide range of postdoctoral programs featuring three MBAs, four accountancy programs and Lean Six Sigma programs, and an extensive portfolio of open courses and in-company projects.
The offered position is within the section of Operations Management.

http://www.uva.nl/en/about-the-uva/organisation/faculties/faculties/faculties/content/folder/faculteit-economie-en-bedrijfskunde/feb-landing-page.html