[open-linguistics] Research Scientist for Automated Language Processing / Text Mining / Digital Humanities

Thu Jan 9 12:05:33 UTC 2014

The German Institute for International Educational Research (DIPF)
(http://www.dipf.de/) in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, is a member of the
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Association of Sciences. As a national centre for
educational research and educational information, it is jointly funded by the
federal government (Bund) and the states (Länder). 

At DIPF, the research unit “Ubiquitous Knowledge Processing Lab“ at the
Information Center for Education (located in Frankfurt am Main, Germany) is
looking for an

Research Scientist for Automated Language Processing / Text Mining / Digital
Humanities (three-year contract, full time, EG13 TV-H*)

The position is situated in the context of the project “Die Welt der Kinder:
Weltwissen und Weltdeutung in Schul- und Kinderbüchern zwischen 1850 und 1918“
[children’s worlds: knowledge and interpretation of the world in  textbooks and
children’s books from 1850 to 1918], subject to the Leibniz competition for
excellence. Here, DIPF collaborates with the Georg-Eckert Institute for
International Textbook Research (Brunswick) and the Institute for Language
Technology and Information Science (University of Hildesheim). 

The project targets research into historical textbooks and children’s books -
and the analysis of world views children grew up with. In the project, classical
qualitative methods used in historical sciences to analyse texts that are
charged with interpretation will be interlinked with automatic indexing and
semantic annotation of historical sources by means of semantic language
processing methods. First and foremost, Topic Detection and Opinion Mining
methods will be explored and further developed. So far, no training data exist
for the analysis of historical texts in German. Thus, the appointment addresses
a genuine task in the context of innovative digital humanities, targeting the
implementation of unsupervised and adaptive language processing methods. Another
innovative aspect concerns the close collaboration with users and the linkage of
intellectual with automated methods of analysis.

The position is integrated into a highly dynamic environment at DIPF and TU
Darmstadt. At DIPF, the successful candidate will co-operate with researchers in
the growing domain of “Ubiquitous Knowledge Processing”, with computer science
and educational research groups and information services, e.g. the Research
Library for  the History of Education (BBF) at DIPF. At TU Darmstadt, a close
co-operation exists concerning the UKP Lab (Prof. Dr. Iryna Gurevych), and
research groups focusing text and data mining as well as partners from digital
humanities projects at Darmstadt and at national levels (DARIAH-DE, CLARIN and
LOEWE priority “Digital Humanities“ in the state of Hesse).

We invite excellently qualified postgraduates or excellent graduates from
relevant study courses to apply (Computer Science, Computational Linguistics or
related subjects).

Requirements:
- Doctoral degree or diploma/master degree in Computer Science, Computational
Linguistics or other relevant subjects;
- Preferably very good programming skills in Java and Web technologies;
knowledge of UIMA;
- Very good English language skills (written and spoken) and at least basic
knowledge of German;
- Ability to work independently, commitment to the task, the ability to work and
communicate in a team and readiness to co-operate;

Experience in automated language processing, text mining or digital humanities
is preferred.

Women are expressly invited to submit their application. According to the
pursuant legal requirements, applicants with disabilities will be preferably
treated in the appointment procedure. 

Owing to the duration of the project, a contract will be signed for three years.
TU Darmstadt offers an opportunity for further scientific qualification (i.e.
doctoral degree, habilitation). The salary complies with TV-H (public service
labour agreement in the state of Hesse). Applicants will principally be able to
work part-time. 

As a scientific institution and member of the Leibniz Association, DIPF targets
high-quality fundamental research as well as a research-based development of
innovative scientific services. It addresses education as a public domain with
high visibility and high importance. 
By bringing together competencies, DIPF and Computer Science at TU Darmstadt are
setting up a priority domain of knowledge processing and computer science in
education.

In relevant national rankings, the Computer Science department at TU Darmstadt
regularly holds top positions. In 2012, the UKP-DIPF group was established: its
unique features include semantic language processing, text mining and
information retrieval as well as powerful infrastructures for evaluating and
aggregating knowledge.

Candidates are requested to submit their application in electronic form
(including CV and information regarding scientific work experience, university
and work reports/references including electronic versions of the thesis and/or
three key publications as well as names of two references), quoting the
reference code (Referenz-Nr. IZB 2014-02). Please e-mail by February 14, 2014 to
Prof. Dr. Iryna Gurevych, German Institute for International Educational
Research (DIPF), Postfach 900270, 60442 Frankfurt am Main, Germany, i.e.
office-ukp (at) dipf (dot) de. If you have any further questions, please contact
Prof. Gurevych by e-mail: gurevych (at) dipf (dot) de.

* Tarifvertrag für den öffentlichen Dienst des Landes Hessen (labour agreement
for public service in Hesse)