Connectionists: Seeking Postdoc and PhD Student for Deep Reinforcement Learning Research

[Nicholas Cheney]

Dear Colleagues,

Please forward this email to anyone who might be interested.  Apologies for
any cross-listings.

More info available at:  www.ncheney.com/join-us.html


A PhD student position and also a two-year postdoc with competitive salary
are both available in Nick Cheney’s lab in the Computer Science Department
at the University of Vermont – and in close collaboration with the
EvolvingAI Lab at the University of Wyoming. The research will be in the
area of meta-learning for artificial general intelligence – applied to a
variety of problems, especially those in deep reinforcement learning.
Responsibilities include helping to design bio-inspired algorithms that
enable agents to learn a variety of new tasks without losing the ability to
perform previous ones (i.e. avoiding “catastrophic forgetting”) and testing
these method on simulated and/or physical robots.

These positions will be advised by Professor Nick Cheney at the University
of Vermont and Professor Jeff Clune at the University of Wyoming/Uber AI
Labs. They are available immediately, and applicants will be considered on
a rolling basis – though some flexibility on start date is possible.
Experience in deep learning and/or reinforcement learning is desired. But
applicants with strong research backgrounds in relevant fields (e.g.
statistics, math, computer science), strong programming and communication
skills, and a demonstrated desire to learn more about machine learning and
neural networks will also be considered.

To apply please send application materials to nac93 at cornell.edu and jeffc
lune at uwyo.edu. These should include a CV with cover letter, transcripts,
GRE scores (if available), contact information (including academic
relationship to you) for 3 letters of reference, a representative
publication, and any additional materials demonstrating verbal
communication skills (e.g. a recorded academic talk, or a recorded summary
of your research interests, motivation, and goals – please link videos
rather than attaching them) or programming skills (e.g. link to a Github
repository).


The Evolving Artificial Intelligence Lab (http://EvolvingAI.org
<http://evolvingai.org/>) focuses on robotics and creating artificial
intelligence in neural networks, either via deep learning or evolutionary
algorithms. The lab is actively engaged in research. Just in the last three
years, we have received an NSF CAREER award, participated in a cover
article in Nature, produced the 63rd most talked about scientific paper
worldwide in 2015, and our deep learning papers were awarded oral
presentations (1-6% acceptance rates) at NIPS, CVPR, ICLR, and an ICML
workshop. In that same time, we also produced six papers at GECCO,
including a best paper award, and three papers in PLoS Computational
Biology – including a cover article with a Reddit AMA about it that over
42,000 people joined to ask 1000+ questions. Additionally, our work has
been covered by almost every major international news outlet.

Professor Cheney’s lab at the University of Vermont is a newly established
core research group within the Vermont Complex Systems Center – a
postdisciplinary team of faculty and students working on real-world,
data-rich, and meaningful complex systems problems of all kinds
(VermontComplexSystems.org). The lab focuses on developing bio-inspired
design and machine learning methods to study and address important complex
adaptive systems in our society – spanning robotics, digital fabrication,
healthcare, and social-environmental problems. The lab is growing quickly
and strongly funded by past and current projects from DARPA, NASA, the NSF,
USDA, ARO, and industrial partnerships. In addition to research output (13
papers in the last two years), the group is also focused on the public
engagement of science – working with government and industrial stakeholders
to help realize real-world impacts of AI research, engaging nearly a
millions viewers via scientific communication videos, and winning 7
conference/institutional awards for these efforts.

The University of Vermont (UVM), established in 1791, is a comprehensive
research university with a current enrollment of 12,000+ undergraduate,
graduate, and medical students. The scientific and academic environments in
the College of Engineering and Mathematical Sciences, and throughout UVM,
are dynamic, highly collaborative, and multi-disciplinary. UVM has state of
the art core facilities, including the Vermont Advanced Computing Center,
the Advanced Genome Technologies Core, and the UVM Medical Center. We also
offer generous benefits packages, including health, dental, disability, and
life insurance, personal and medical leave, and tuition remission.

The University is located in beautiful Burlington, Vermont, about 90 miles
south of Montreal. Burlington is consistently ranked as one of the best
small cities in America for quality of living, and features year-round
outdoor recreation and cultural events. Greater Burlington has a population
of approximately 150,000 and enjoys a panoramic setting on Lake Champlain,
bordered by the Adirondack and Green Mountains.

The University is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action employer and
actively encourages applications from women, veterans, and people from
diverse racial, ethnic, and cultural backgrounds.

Thank you for your interest in this position, or your help to advertise it!


Best regards,

Nick Cheney
Research Assistant Professor, Computer Science
University of Vermont
nac93 at cornell.edu
ncheney.com

Jeff Clune
Associate Professor, Computer Science
Director, Evolving Artificial Intelligence Lab
University of Wyoming
jeffclune at uwyo.edu
jeffclune.com
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