Connectionists: PhD position in Analysis and control techniques for spoken language applications at Tilburg University (Netherlands)

[Grzegorz Chrupała]

Open until filled - apply soon:
https://www.academictransfer.com/en/313182/phd-position-in-analysis-and-control-techniques-for-spoken-language-applications-1-fte/

Details:

The Cognitive Science & Artificial Intelligence department at Tilburg
University invites applications for one fully-funded PhD position in
the area of language and speech technologies. This position is
embedded within the NWO-funded project “InDeep: Interpreting deep
learning models for language, speech & music” in collaboration with
several universities and companies in the Netherlands. The project
consortium brings together a number of pioneering experts in the field
of interpretability (https://interpretingdl.github.io) and aims at
bridging the gap between the latest academic advances and
societal/industrial users of deep learning models at large.


The PhD candidate will work on a project on the development of
analysis and control techniques for deep-learning based speech
processing models, led by Dr. Grzegorz Chrupała.
The projects will combine ideas, methods and data from Speech
Recognition, Natural Language Processing, and Machine Learning.

Project description: Speech processing is increasingly done via
end-to-end rather than modular models: this makes it hard to
understand what is causing the model’s decisions in general and
specifically why it fails when it does. Given the opacity of such
end-to-end models, it is desirable to develop and test methods for
analyzing the intermediate representations they learn, and
interpreting the decisions they make. The objective of this project is
to develop and test methods for manipulating intermediate
representations learned by end-to-end speech-understanding models in
order to make it possible for users to debug them, to control them,
and explain their output. The models of interest include, among
others, automatic speech recognition, visually grounded models of
spoken language and spoken language translation systems.

Requirements

Master’s degree in computer science, speech and audio processing,
computational linguistics, machine learning, or a related field. If
you expect to obtain your degree before December 2022, you are also
eligible.
Knowledge of machine learning in general as well as practical
experience with deep learning models and toolkits (e.g. Pytorch).
Experience with speech processing is a strong plus.
Excellent knowledge of English and good academic writing skills.

What we offer

A full-time position.
The selected candidate will start with a contract for one year. Upon a
positive outcome of the first-year evaluation, the candidate will be
offered an employment contract for the remaining three years.
A minimum gross salary of € 2.443,- per month up to a maximum of €
3.122,- in the fourth year.
A holiday allowance of 8% and an end-of-year bonus of 8.3% (annually).
Researchers from outside the Netherlands may qualify for a tax-free
allowance equal to 30% of their taxable salary (the 30% tax
regulation). The University will apply for such an allowance on their
behalf.
Assistance in finding accommodation (for foreign employees).
Benefits such as an options model for terms and conditions of
employment and reimbursement of moving expenses, also including
excellent technical infrastructure, savings schemes and excellent
sport facilities.

The collective labor agreement of the Dutch Universities applies.

Grzegorz Chrupała
Department of Cognitive Science and Artificial Intelligence
Tilburg University
PO Box 90153
5000 LE Tilburg
The Netherlands

Twitter: @gchrupala
Web: grzegorz.chrupala.me
Email: grzegorz at chrupala.me