IDSIA PHD JOB OPENING

[Juergen Schmidhuber]

                        PHD STUDENT WANTED

I am seeking an outstanding PhD candidate for a research project on
reinforcement learning (RL) and program evolution (PE).

OVERVIEW.  Most machine learning research focuses on learning memory-free
mappings between input patterns and output patterns.  Humans, however,
obviously learn entire algorithms mapping input sequences to output
sequences in a complex fashion.  In particular, they constantly learn to
identify important events in input streams and store them in short-term
memory until the memories are needed to compute appropriate output
actions.  If we want to bridge the gap between the learning abilities
of humans and machines then we will have to study how such sequential
processes can be learned.  The focus of this project will be on RL and
PE methods whose search space consists of fairly arbitrary, possibly
probabilistic "programs" (as opposed to more limited stimulus/response
associations).

POSSIBLE PROJECT SUBGOALS.  The project allows considerable
scientific freedom. If you have a great idea, let's go for it and
try it. Otherwise we'll start along the following lines.  (1) Explore
the limits of recent algorithmic search techniques such as "Adaptive
Levin Search" and "Probabilistic Incremental Program Evolution" -
both of which can learn memory strategies.  (2) Improve, extend, and
apply a recent technique "Incremental self-improvement" based on the
success-story algorithm for probabilistic, self-modifying systems
that can in principle learn to improve their own learning algorithm
(metalearning).  (3) Build unsupervised, "curious" systems selecting
their own training exemplars for building models of the environment,
and use the models to speed up improvement of goal-directed sequential
behavior.  (4) Examine RL economies where agents learn to pay each
other for useful services, and test whether they can learn to memorize.
See http://www.idsia.ch/~juergen/topics.html for papers on the above
subjects.

A highly qualified candidate is sought with a background in computational
sciences, mathematics, engineering, physics or other relevant areas.
Applicants should submit : (i) Detailed curriculum vitae, (ii) List
of three references (and their email addresses), (ii) Transcripts of
undergraduate and graduate (if applicable) studies and (iii) Concise
statement of their research interests (two pages max).  Candidates are
also encouraged to submit their scores in the Graduate Record Examination
(GRE) general test (if available). Please send hardcopies of all
documents to:

Juergen Schmidhuber, IDSIA, Corso Elvezia 36, 6900-Lugano, Switzerland

Applications (with WWW pointers to studies or papers, if available) can
also be submitted electronically (in plain ASCII or postscript format,
but only small files please) to  juergen at idsia.ch.  Please connect
your first and last name by a dot "." in the subject header, and add a
meaningful extension. For instance, if your name is John Smith, then your
messages could have headers such as: subject: John.Smith.cv.ps, subject:
John.Smith.statement.txt, subject: John.Smith.correspondence.txt....
This will facilitate appropriate filing of your stuff.  Thanks a lot!

ABOUT IDSIA.  Our research focuses on artificial neural nets,
reinforcement learning, complexity and generalization issues,
unsupervised learning and information theory, forecasting, combinatorial
optimization, evolutionary computation.  IDSIA's algorithms hold the
world records for several important operations research benchmarks.
In the "X-Lab Survey" by Business Week magazine, IDSIA was ranked in
fourth place in the category "COMPUTER SCIENCE - BIOLOGICALLY INSPIRED".
Its comparatively tiny size notwithstanding, IDSIA also ranked among the
top ten labs worldwide in the broader category "ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE".

We are located in the beautiful city of Lugano in Ticino, the scenic
southernmost province of Switzerland.  Milano, Italy's center of fashion
and finance, is 1 hour away, Venice 3 hours.  Our collaborators at the
Swiss supercomputing center CSCS are nearby;  the new University of Lugano
is across the lawn.  Switzerland (origin of special relativity and the
World Wide Web) boasts the highest citation impact factor, the highest
supercomputing capacity pc (per capita), the most Nobel prizes pc (450%
of the US value), the highest income pc, and perhaps the best chocolate.

SALARY: commensurate with experience but generally attractive. Low taxes.
There also is travel funding in case of papers accepted at important
conferences.

_________________________________________________
Juergen Schmidhuber             research director
IDSIA, Corso Elvezia 36, 6900-Lugano, Switzerland
juergen at idsia.ch     http://www.idsia.ch/~juergen