<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html charset=us-ascii"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space;"><div><br></div><div><div><b>Flowers Lab at Inria</b> (Bordeaux, France)</div><div><a href="https://goo.gl/32SAEw">https://flowers.inria.fr</a></div><div>Deadline: 16th december</div><div><br></div><div><div>We are searching highly qualilified candidates for a <b>tenure senior research position </b>(full time research, no teaching mandatory). </div><div>Candidates should have an outstanding academic track record in one or two of the following domains:</div><div><br></div><div>1) <b>Computational modelling of cognitive development</b>, including the following research topics and methods:</div><div> - Models of exploration and active learning in humans and animals</div><div> - Models of human reinforcement learning and decision making</div><div> - Bayesian or neuronal models of development</div><div> - Models of autonomous lifelong learning</div><div> - Models of tool learning </div><div> - Sensorimotor, language and social development</div><div> - Strong experience of collaborations with developmental psychologists or neuroscientists</div><div><br></div><div>2)<b> Lifelong autonomous machine learning and artificial intelligence</b>, including:</div><div> - Unsupervised deep reinforcement learning</div><div> - Intrinsic motivation </div><div> - Developmental learning, curriculum learning</div><div> - Contextual bandit algorithms</div><div> - Multitask and transfer learning</div><div> - Hierarchical learning</div><div> - Strong experience in benchmarking with robotic or virtual world setups</div><div><br></div><div>As the Flowers lab domains of application are robotics/HRI/HCI and educational technologies, experience in one of these two</div><div>domains would be a clear asset. </div><div><br></div><div>Experience in writing successful grant proposals will also be considered positively.</div><div><br></div><div>Candidates should have a strong postdoc experience after their PhD, or may already be at the level of occupying a research position</div><div>in a university or research organization. </div><div><br></div><div><b>The Flowers Lab: developmental robotics and lifelong multitask machine learning</b></div><div>===================================================================</div><div><br></div><div>The Flowers Lab, headed by Pierre-Yves Oudeyer, gathers a team of ~20 members and has been one of the pioneers of developmental robotics and lifelong machine learning</div><div>and artificial intelligence in the last decade, in particular through developping models of <b>intrinsically motivated learning of repertoires </b><b>of skills</b> that have both contributed </div><div>to advance understanding of <b>human curiosity and development</b>, and to advance incremental online multitask <b>machine learning techniques in difficult high-dimensional </b></div><div><b>robotic spaces</b>. </div><div><br></div><div>This work in the Flowers lab are conducted in the context of large international projects (e.g. ERC grant, European projects 3rdHand and DREAM, HFSP project Neurocuriosity),</div><div>with <b>interdisicplinary collaborations with other labs in neuroscience, psychology, machine learning and robotics</b>. The successful candidates would be directly</div><div>involved in these international collaborations. </div><div><br></div><div>The Flowers Lab has is also developping applications of these concepts and techniques in the domain of <b>educational technologies</b>, including adaptive</div><div>intelligent tutoring systems (using bandit algorithms), educational robotics, and software that stimulate curiosity and learning in humans.</div><div><br></div><div>The Flowers lab has recently spin-off the Pollen Robotics startup company, and is involved in multiple collaborations with industrials through Inria's strong</div><div>support towards impacting both science and industry. </div><div><br></div><div><b>Inria and EnstaParistech</b></div><div>===================</div><div><br></div><div>The lab is within Inria, which is a prestigious, and also the largest, public European research insitution focused on computer science, mathematics and their applications.</div><div>Inria's teams and researchers (> 2800 employees) have received prestigious awards, coordinate many international projects, and have created strong innovations now used in many</div><div>parts of industry. Inria research center in Bordeaux gathers around 300 researchers. </div><div>The Flowers Lab is also associated to EnstaParisTech, which is a prestigious French engineering school (university).</div><div><br></div><div><b>Bordeaux </b></div><div>========</div><div><br></div><div>The Flowers lab in Bordeaux is located in a great building on the border of one of the world most famous vineyard, and 10mn by tram from Bordeaux town center</div><div>(and 2 hours from Paris through high-speed trains): <a href="https://www.inria.fr/en/centre/bordeaux">https://www.inria.fr/en/centre/bordeaux</a></div><div>Bordeaux has been recently rated by Lonely Planet as the world's best city to visit: <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/travel/news-and-advice/best-cities-in-the-world-top-10-lonely-planet-bordeaux-cape-town-la-a7379066.html">http://www.independent.co.uk/travel/news-and-advice/best-cities-in-the-world-top-10-lonely-planet-bordeaux-cape-town-la-a7379066.html</a></div><div><br></div><div><b>Web</b></div><div>===</div><div><br></div><div>Flowers web site: <a href="https://goo.gl/32SAEw">https://flowers.inria.fr</a></div><div>Neurocuriosity project: <a href="http://goo.gl/6Irm1g">https://flowers.inria.fr/neurocuriosityproject/</a></div><div>Lifelong intrinsically motivated learning in robots: <a href="http://goo.gl/auZ3ae">http://www.pyoudeyer.com/active-learning-and-artificial-curiosity-in-robots/</a></div><div>Inria: <a href="http://www.inria.fr/">http://www.inria.fr</a></div><div><br></div><div><b>How to apply</b></div><div>===========</div><div><br></div><div>CVs and letters of motivation should be sent to Pierre-Yves Oudeyer (<a href="mailto:pierre-yves.oudeyer@inria.fr">pierre-yves.oudeyer@inria.fr</a>) before 16th december.</div><div>Then, a pre-selection will be made and a full application with a detailed research statement and program will have to be submitted early february.</div><div>The successful candidate would begin to work between september and december 2017.</div></div><div><br></div><div><div>Pierre-Yves Oudeyer </div><div>Research director, Inria</div><div>Head of Flowers Lab</div><div>Inria and Ensta ParisTech</div><div><a href="http://goo.gl/HGwDC2">http://www.pyoudeyer.com</a></div></div><div><br></div></div></body></html>