Position as postdoctoral research fellow (SKO 1352), available at The Department for Informatics

The Department of Informatics (IFI) is one of nine departments belonging to the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences at the University of Oslo. IFI is Norway’s largest university department for general education and research in Computer Science and related topics. You can read more about the Department here: http://www.ifi.uio.no  The Department has near 800 students on bachelor level, near 300 master students, and over 200 PhD students. The totall staff of the Department is close to 250 employees, about 150 of these are full time scientific positions: about 60 Professors and Associate Professors

The post-doctoral fellowship is for a duration of between three and four years, depending on final funding decisions

Job Description:

The LT research area has its focus in hybrid approaches to Natural Language Processing, with emphasis on the interplay of grammar and semantics. The ideal candidate will have competency in both rule-based and statistical methods within Computational Linguistics, as well as an understanding of the use of these methods in core NLP tasks like parsing, lexical acquisition, information extraction, sentiment analysis, or others. Such a hybrid background will be a strong plus, but not an absolute requirement. The group pursues a predominantly applied research agenda, hence at least a minimal level of implementation experience is desirable for this position. The project builds on existing resources from the DELPH-IN and ParGram repositories, for English and Norwegian, respectively. Some prior experience within the relevant frameworks (e.g. constraint-based grammar and semantics:HPSG, LFG, and MRS) or familiarity with some of the tools involved would be especially welcome; so would be knowledge of data-driven approaches to lexical acquisition and parsing; and of course of the grammar of the languages involved in the project. Research at UiO will have its focus on English, hence proficiency in Norwegian is not a prerequisite. Finally, a personal interest and readyness to contribute to teaching in Computational Linguistics (at the undergraduate and graduate levels) and supervision of MSc candidates is expected.

As part of the appointment, a limited amount of teaching, supervision, or other non-research duties may be assigned. No post-doctoral fellow can be appointed for more than one specified period at the same institution. This position is part of a new research project, with funding from the Norwegian Research Council. Project participants are the Universities of Oslo (coordinator), Bergen, and Stanford, with additional international collaborators at the Universities of Cambridge and Melbourne, as well as at DFKI in Germany. The project seeks to develop large-scale semantic parsing technology for social media content, with a focus on English and Norwegian Bokmål.

Requirements:

The candidate must have a PhD or other corresponding education equivalent to a Norwegian doctoral degree in the fields of Computational Linguistics or Computer Science (with a specialization in Language Technology). The position is hosted at the Focal Research Area in Language Technology (LT), which in turn is part of the IFI Research Group in Logic and Natural Languages (LNS). For background on the research environment, please see:

http://www.ifi.uio.no/research/groups/lns/lt.html

http://www.ifi.uio.no/research/groups/lns

Applicants are expected to include a summary of academic specialization and statement of scientific interests.

UiO (and Norway more generally) is a multi-lingual environment, where knowledge of Norwegian is not a necessity in everyday life. However, a good command of English is required. http://www.matnat.uio.no/english/research/education/proficiency_in_English.html

Submissions:

The main purpose of post-doctoral research fellowships is to qualify researchers for work in top academic positions within their disciplines.

Please also refer to the regulations pertaining to the conditions of employment for post-doctoral fellowship positions:

http://www.uio.no/admhb/reglhb/personal/tilsettingvitenskapelig/regulationstermcondition.xml

Salary: Postdoctoral Research Fellow (SKO 1352), pay grade: 57 – 64 (NOK 438 500 – 499 500 per year, depending on qualifications and seniority)

The application must include:

• Application letter
• Statement of research interest
• CV (summarizing education, positions, pedagogical experience, administrative experience and other qualifying activity)
• Copies of educational certificates and letters of recommendation, as applicable
• A complete list of publications and up to 5 academic work that the applicant wishes to be considered by the evaluation committee
• Names and contact details of 2-3 references (name, relation to candidate, e-mail and telephone number

Please remember that all documents should be in English or a Scandinavian language.

Closing date for applications: June 1, 2010

UiO has an agreement for all employees, aiming to secure rights to research results a.o.

The University of Oslo has a goal of recruiting more women in academic positions. Women are encouraged to apply.

In accordance with the University of Oslo’s equal opportunities policy, we invite applications from all interested individuals regardless of gender or ethnicity.