Connectionists: PhD position in Spiking nets for Speech Prosody

[Phil Garner]

Dear Colleagues,

There is a fully funded PhD position open at Idiap Research Institute on 
spiking neural architectures for speech prosody.

The research will build on work done recently at Idiap on creating tools for 
physiologically plausible modelling of speech. The current "toolbox" contains 
rudimentary muscle models and means to drive these using conventional (deep) 
neural networks. The main focus of the work will involve use of spiking neural 
networks such as the "integrate and fire" type that is broadly representative 
of those found in biological systems. Whilst we have focused so far on prosody 
(actually intonation), the application is open ended; the focus is on the 
neural modelling. A key problem to be solved will be that of training of the 
spiking networks, especially with the recurrence that is usual in such 
networks. We hope to be able to train and use spiking networks as easily as 
conventional backpropagation networks, and to shed light on current 
understanding of how biological spiking networks learn (e.g., via spike 
timing-dependent plasticity).

For more information, and to apply, please follow this link:
  http://www.idiap.ch/education-and-jobs/job-10263

Idiap is located in Martigny in French speaking Switzerland, but functions in 
English and hosts many nationalities.  PhD students are registered at EPFL. All 
positions offer quite generous salaries.  Martigny has a distillery and a 
micro-brewery and is close to all manner of skiing, hiking and mountain life.

There are other open positions on Idiap's main page
  https://www.idiap.ch/en/join-us/job-opportunities

Sincerely,
-- 
Phil Garner
http://www.idiap.ch/~pgarner