Dear all,
We have several openings for fully funded Ph.D. and MS student positions in NLP at Koç University https://www.ku.edu.tr/en/, Istanbul. The positions will focus on understanding and processing procedural language provided as natural language instructions (e.g., step-by-step instructions to fix WiFi). Some of the topics are (but are not limited to):
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Investigating and designing neural/hybrid models with long-range reasoning on procedural text, -
Document-grounded task-oriented dialogue on procedural text, -
Designing evaluation metrics and benchmarks for procedural text
The "Automatic Learning of Procedural Language from Natural Language Instructions for Intelligent Assistance" is funded by The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkiye and is led by Asst. Prof. Gözde Gül Şahin https://gozdesahin.github.io/.
The position will also be affiliated with KUIS AI https://ai.ku.edu.tr/, a thriving international research environment with more than 50 graduate students working on NLP-related topics spread over computer vision, robotics, machine learning, and human-computer interaction. Successful candidates will have the opportunity to collaborate closely with other researchers at the KUIS AI and at Koç University. The primary communication language is English. The preferred starting date is as soon as possible.
Qualifications
The ideal candidates should be enthusiastic about natural language processing, have excellent mathematical and programming skills, should be team players, and have Bachelor's degrees in computer science, computational linguistics, or a related discipline.
Offer
Salary: Current KUIS AI fellowship salaries are 11.200TL/mo for MSc and 18.600TL/mo for Ph.D. students. Scholarship raises after a qualified publication as the first author: 1000 TL/mo for MS, 1500 TL/mo for Ph.D., to be re-evaluated every semester.
Travel: Full support for top-tier conference publications.
Computation: A laptop (or workstation if preferred). Full access to the 2nd largest GPU cluster in Turkiye.
Side benefits: Private health insurance, meal card, and student housing based on availability (only for Ph.D. students)
How to apply?
If you are interested in any of the positions, please send an email to gosahin[at]ku.edu.tr gosahin@ku.edu.tr with the subject "Ph.D. (or MS) application". Please send a CV, transcript (or records), a copy of a work that you're most proud of (e.g., Master's thesis, conference paper), and a motivation letter stating your research interests.
The official application still needs to be done via the application portal as instructed here https://international.ku.edu.tr/graduate-programs/how-to-apply/. The official deadline is the 4th of June, however, the applications will be reviewed on a regular basis. Please indicate "NLP" and "Procedural text" as your research interests and mention Dr. Gözde Gül Şahin in your Statement of Purpose.
Why Koç University?
According to the Times Higher Education, we rank 1st in Türkiye and 36th in the world among universities under 50 years old.
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The number of research articles per faculty at Koç University is one of the top in the country. -
The working language at KU is English.
Koç University (KU) is an endowed, non-profit institution of higher education, located in Istanbul, Türkiye. Founded in 1993 by the Vehbi Koç Foundation, its mission is to produce the most capable graduates by providing a world-class education, to advance the frontiers of knowledge and to contribute to the benefit of Türkiye and humanity at large. KU is spread over a main campus, a separate university hospital campus, and two smaller locations in Istanbul. Since its establishment, KU has quickly become one of the leading research universities in Türkiye, attracting accomplished, high-caliber researchers from all over the world. The vast majority (97%) of 400 faculty members have received their Ph.D. degrees from the most highly selective and reputable universities in the world, including the United States and Europe. The majority of the students enrolled in the undergraduate programs are ranked within the top 1% in the National University Entrance Exam. Currently, the university is ranked among the top three universities in Türkiye in terms of the number of international research publications per faculty member per year.
Best,
Gözde Gül Şahin Assistant Professor Computer Engineering Department Koç University