* PhD position (salary group TV-L 13, working time 100 %, initially limited to 3 years) * *******************************************************************

We are seeking a highly motivated PhD candidate to join the Data & Knowledge Engineering group (https://www.cs.hhu.de/en/research-groups/data-knowledge-engineering https://www.cs.hhu.de/en/research-groups/data-knowledge-engineering) at Heinrich-Heine-University Düsseldorf in collaboration with GESIS, Cologne (http://www.gesis.org) in the context of the DFG-funded research project "EmergentIR: Improving Informational Web Search for Emerging Topics".

The project investigates web search behavior and algorithms in the context of emerging topics, i.e. for novel and less-well understood search queries. An example is the search for COVID-19 related terms and topics during the early days of the pandemic, where available online resources and information were evolving quickly and reliable high quality information was sparse.

* Your responsibilities * ************************ - Research in fields such as information retrieval, information extraction/NLP and/or human-computer interaction to investigate and support web search on emerging topics, e.g. to predict search intents, detect emerging topics or support ranking and retrieval of information. - Work and collaborate with an interdisciplinary team of researchers to develop and evaluate computational methods in the context of web search. - Publish and present research results at major scientific events

* Your profile * **************** - Master’s degree in computer science or a related field. - Background in the following areas: information retrieval, natural language processing, or machine learning/deep learning. - Experience in programming (e.g. Python) and with machine learning frameworks such as PyTorch or TensorFlow - Fluency in English. German language skills are desirable but not required.

* Contact & application process * ******************************** Please send your complete application documents (CV, certificates & transcripts) as a single PDF file to Stefan Dietze (stefan.dietze@hhu.de) by 15 April. For any informal enquiries about the position, please don't hesitate to get in touch via the same email address.