Two Postdoctoral Research Fellowships

[Richard Lister]

----------------------------------------------------------------------

                   Neural Computing Research Group
                   -------------------------------

           Dept of Computer Science and Applied Mathematics

                   Aston University, Birmingham, UK

                TWO POSTDOCTORAL RESEARCH FELLOWSHIPS
                -------------------------------------

        ***  Full details at http://www.ncrg.aston.ac.uk/  ***

----------------------------------------------------------------------

           Analysis of On-Line Learning in Neural Networks
           -----------------------------------------------

The Neural Computing Research Group at Aston is looking for  a  highly
motivated  individual  for  a 2 year postdoctoral research position in
the area of `Analysis of On-Line Learning  in  Neural  Networks'.  The
emphasis  of  the  research  will be on applying a theoretically well-
founded approach based on methods adopted from  statistical  mechanics
to  analyse  learning  in  multilayer  perceptrons in various learning
scenarios.

Potential candidates should have strong mathematical and computational
skills,   with  a  background  in  statistical  mechanics  and  neural
networks.

Conditions of Service
---------------------

Salaries will be up to point 6 on the RA 1A scale, currently 15,986 UK
pounds. The salary scale is subject to annual increments.


How to Apply
------------

If you wish to be considered for this Fellowship, please send  a  full
CV  and  publications  list,  including  full  details  and  grades of
academic qualifications, together with the names of 3 referees, to:

    Dr. David Saad
    Neural Computing Research Group
    Dept. of Computer Science and Applied Mathematics
    Aston University
    Birmingham B4 7ET, U.K.
    Tel: 0121 333 4631
    Fax: 0121 333 6215
    e-mail: D.Saad at aston.ac.uk

e-mail submission of postscript files is welcome.

Candidates that applied for the position `On-line Learning  in  Radial
Basis  Function  Networks'  will  be automatically considered for this
position as well.

Closing date: 12 August, 1996.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

     NEUROSAT: Processing of environment observing satellite data
     ------------------------------------------------------------
                         with Neural Networks
                         --------------------

The Neural Computing Research Group at Aston is looking for  a  highly
motivated  individual  for  a 3 year postdoctoral research position in
the area of processing environmental data from satellites with  neural
networks,  working  with Dr. Ian Nabney. The post is funded by a grant
from the European Commission Directorate General  XII  in  Environment
and Climate.

Candidates should have strong mathematical and  computational  skills,
with  a  background  in  one  or  more  of  neural  networks, Bayesian
inference, or satellite data analysis.

NEUROSAT is a  three  collaborative  project  whose  objective  is  to
contribute  to  an enhanced analysis of the real Earth climate driving
forces. The consortium  is  led  by  Michel  Crepon  at  the  Institut
Pierre-Simon-Laplace  (IPSL)  in Paris, and includes partners from the
UK, France, Germany and Italy.

Aston will be involved in two work  packages:  Assessment  of  Generic
Techniques   and   Inferring  Sea  Surface  Wind  from  Scatterometric
Measurements.

In the first of these, we are responsible for contributions to  survey
papers,  for  technology  transfer  to  other  partners,  and for some
feasibility studies in the use of neural  networks  in  climatological
problems.

The second work package, which will be  the  main  activity,  involves
developing some existing research on scatterometric data analysis to a
state where it can be compared with  the  current  operational  system
(AEOLUS) used at the Meteorological Office. The data that will be used
comes from the ERS1 satellite. A two stage approach will  be  applied.
The  first  stage  is  to  improve the local modelling (i.e.  the wind
vector in a single cell), and the  second  stage  is  to  improve  the
global modelling (i.e. the overall wind field).

To improve the local modelling, the influence  of  sea  state  on  the
scatterometer  signals will be studied. This will be done by using the
ERS1 signal collocated with wind vector and sea  state  obtained  from
analysed  fields  of meteorological models and fused with in situ buoy
observations. The purpose of this work is to  understand  the  factors
involved in the GMF so as to improve the inverse function modelling.

Earlier work at Aston has used mixture density networks to  model  the
conditional  density  of the inverse function (since this is typically
multi-valued for wind direction), and this  will  make  it  easier  to
incorporate  probabilistic  information  into  the  global model. Such
information includes priors on model parameters, priors on data coming
from  weather stations and climatological information (e.g.  long term
weather trends). This will also allow the wind-field  to  be  `seeded'
with  known values at specific locations. Techniques from optical flow
(for  example,  div-curl  splines)  and  Bayesian   models   will   be
investigated for their application to modelling the global wind field.

This approach should lead to a  self  consistent,  accurate  and  fast
neural  network  procedure  to  retrieve  the  entire wind field. This
information will be useful to meteorological centres to be assimilated
into   their   prediction   models.  Dr.  David  Offiler  (of  the  UK
Meteorological Office) will  act  as  a  consultant  to  the  project,
assisting in the development of prior models and the assessment of the
prediction methods. If we can improve  on  existing  techniques,  then
there is every prospect of replacing them in operational use.

Informal enquiries can be made to Ian Nabney (I.T.Nabney at aston.ac.uk).
The target start date is September 1996, although this may be somewhat
flexible.


Conditions of Service
---------------------

Salaries will be up to point 6 on the RA 1A scale, currently 15,986 UK
pounds. These salary scales are subject to annual increments.


How to Apply
------------

If you wish to be considered for this position, please send a full  CV
and publications list, together with the names of 3 referees, to:

    Dr. Ian Nabney
    Neural Computing Research Group
    Department of Computer Science and Applied Mathematics
    Aston University
    Birmingham B4 7ET, U.K.

    Tel: +44 121 333 4631
    Fax: +44 121 333 4586
    e-mail: I.T.Nabney at aston.ac.uk

(email submission of postscript files is welcome)

Closing date: 12 August, 1996.

----------------------------------------------------------------------