1 PhD/1 Post Doc position - IBM Research Lab - Zurich

[Andre Elisseeff]

PhD/Post Doc position - IBM Research Lab - Zurich, Switzerland.
Algorithm Design for Sequential Decision Making Systems.

The machine learning team of the IBM Research Lab in Zurich is
looking for students for one PhD position and one Post-doc
position in the area of machine learning, artificial intelligence,
statistics, and/or related fields.

The candidate would work on designing and developing new
approaches for sequential/temporal data with applications to
marketing and medical data analysis. She/he will be integrated in
a scientific environment where academic publications and real data
analysis are the main activities. It is expected that the
candidate has a strong understanding of advanced statistical
algorithms and is ready to get into the implementation of the
techniques that she/he will develop in the group.

The IBM Research Lab in Zurich is located in Rueschlikon (15min.
away from the center of Zurich). The official language of the lab
is English. See www.zurich.ibm.com for more information about the
lab and its surroundings.

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Introduction to the research topic:

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With the advent of the information technology era, companies and
institutions have recorded a lot of data: hospitals have gathered
historical records of patients with the evolution of their
disease, web companies are monitoring how visitors move from pages
to pages, even video game programmers start to look at how players
interact with the game. In all those situations, the data is used
to analyze how the patient, the visitor or the gamer will react to
some action/decision that the doctor/company or game might make.
As the number of records and the complexity of real problems
increase, this analytical process tends to be performed more and
more by machines. This has led to the invention of sequential
decision making techniques which use a database of historical
records to build a statistical model of the environment (e.g.
patient, visitor or gamer) and to find the optimal set of actions
to be taken in the future. Although such techniques have been used
in a large domain of applications, no generic solution can be
taken off the shelves. Designing sequential decision making
algorithms that can take into account application specific
constraints is an ongoing research subject and is the main topic
of our team.

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Please send your application by email (C.V. including a cover
letter) to:
 Andre Elisseeff (ael at zurich.ibm.com)
 Abderrahim Labbi (abl at zurich.ibm.com)
 IBM Research Lab, Zurich Saumerstrasse 4, CH-8803 Rueschlikon

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Closing date for all applications by email or post:
 Friday 29th October 2004.

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Note: the starting dates of the positions will be defined
according to the candidate's possibilities.

Andre Elisseeff