Pre-Ph.D. and postdoctoral positions in NLP at the Sapienza University of Rome

TWO RESEARCH FELLOW POSITIONS IN NATURAL LANGUAGE PROCESSING

Sapienza University of Rome (Italy)

One pre-Ph.D. position (with the possibility of starting a Ph.D. in 2014 on the same salary), and one postdoctoral position, both in Natural Language Processing, are open in the Linguistic Computing Laboratory (http://lcl.uniroma1.it), Department of Computer Science of the Sapienza University of Rome.

The positions are part of a 5-year ERC Starting Grant funded by the European Research Council (ERC) and headed by Prof. Roberto Navigli (see http://multijedi.org for details and publications). The successful candidates will participate in a frontier research project on multilingual lexical semantics and will work in the vibrant environment of a leading and highly-active research team comprising 2 faculty members, 2 post-docs and 6 Ph.D. students.

REQUIREMENTS/QUALIFICATIONS

For the pre-Ph.D. position (LCL1-2013)

The successful candidate will work actively on BabelNet (http://babelnet.org) and its developments and extensions, including semantic and statistical machine translation:

* M.Sc. or equivalent in Computer Science, Computational Linguistics, Mathematics or related fields

* Solid programming skills in Java

* Fluent English. Knowledge of Italian is NOT a requirement.

* Publications in Computational Linguistics are a plus

For the postdoctoral position (LCL2-2013)

The successful candidate will drive the scientific and technological development and future directions of BabelNet (http://babelnet.org):

* Ph.D. in Computer Science, Computational Linguistics or related fields.

* Strong publication record in Computational Linguistics/Natural Language Processing, particularly in knowledge acquisition, (open) information extraction and/or ontology learning.

* Willingness to coordinate and supervise part of the research work of the ERC project.

* Ability to work in a collaborative environment, with a strong commitment to achieving research goals.

* Fluent English. Knowledge of Italian is NOT a requirement.

* Solid programming skills: Java and practical expertise with standard NLP tools are required, knowledge of Perl is a plus.

* Experience in research project management is a plus.

INFORMATION

* Application deadline: November 20, 2013

* Starting date: as early as possible in 2014

* Duration: 1+1+1 years

* Salary: 25000 euros (LCL1-2013) and 37000 euros (LCL2-2013) per annum, depending on qualifications. Note that this type of research contract is exempt from most taxes (25000 euros per annum corresponds to around 1600 euros net per month; 37000 euros per annum corresponds to around 2400 euros net per month).

HOW TO APPLY

Application and informal inquiries can be sent by email to Roberto Navigli (navigli@di.uniroma1.it). The application requires a detailed CV and contact details for up to three references. Please include the job reference (LCL1-2013 or LCL2-2013) in the subject line.

ABOUT THE SAPIENZA UNIVERSITY OF ROME

The Sapienza University of Rome is a seven-century-old university in the heart of Rome. It is one of the largest universities in Europe, with around 150,000 students. Its Faculty of Information Engineering, Informatics and Statistics (that includes the Department of Computer Science) is one of the youngest, most energetic and scientifically active environments at Sapienza. The Sapienza University is an equal opportunity employer.

ABOUT THE SAPIENZA COMPUTER SCIENCE DEPARTMENT

The Department of Computer Science is a modern and well-equipped research institution with a top-class faculty and a strong Ph.D. program. The Department comprises 44 faculty members (among whom 3 ERC grant holders), 15 postdocs and around 30 Ph.D. students. The successful candidates will be based in Rome, one of the most beautiful cities in the world. The Department is situated just across the road from the main University Campus, close to a student area with lots of cafes, bars, restaurants, and only a short bus ride from the city centre. Candidates should not be afraid of the language barrier, as Italians are in general very friendly. English is spoken widely throughout the Department.

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Roberto Navigli
Dipartimento di Informatica
Sapienza University of Rome
Viale Regina Elena 295 (second floor)
00161 Roma Italy
Phone: +39 0649255161 - Fax: +39 06 8541842
Home Page: http://wwwusers.di.uniroma1.it/~navigli
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