Dear all,

The Department of Cognitive Science and Artificial Intelligence at Tilburg University is delighted to announce a PhD vacancy for a highly motivated and talent student to contribute to the cutting-edge field of Machine Translation (MT). More specifically, the candidate will focus on the important yet challenging and exciting topic of Inclusive Machine Translation. Traditional Neural Machine Translation (NMT) systems tend to suffer from overgeneralizations, biases and lack of transparency. By mitigating biases and enhancing the transparency of NMT systems, the PhD researcher will work towards fairer and more inclusive MT. In line with the research interests of the Inclusive and Sustainable Machine Translation (ISMT) Lab, the objective of this research proposal is thus to investigate efficient and sustainable ways to address challenges related to inclusivity, bias and transparency in NMT.

We offer a fully funded, 4-year PhD position, to conduct research and innovation activities in the field of text-to-text Machine Translation. Within the scope of this PhD, topics such as data compilation, data preprocessing and data analysis tailored to the needs of Machine Translation; development and neural architectures for uncovering bias and enhance explainabilty in translation and/or adapting architectures with successful application on text-to-text MT; adapting and adopting pre-trained language models, and human-centred design, evaluation and validation activities will be addressed.

This position is hosted by the ISMT Lab of the CSAI department which focuses on (i) user- and use-case-centric MT, (ii) Inclusive Language Technology and (iii) Sustainable and Environmentally Conscious AI. Through its research activities it aims at promoting inclusiveness and cross-field collaborations, working with both academia and industry. The PhD candidate will be supervised by dr. Eva Vanmassenhovehttps://research.tilburguniversity.edu/en/persons/eva-vanmassenhove and dr. Frédéric Blainhttps://research.tilburguniversity.edu/en/persons/fred-blain (daily supervisors), and dr. Afra Alishahihttp://afra.alishahi.name/ (promotor).

The work will be centred around objectives that will involve:

Data Analysis, Data Processing Techniques, Model Training (design and implementation of state-of-the-art Deep Learning models for MT), Annotations (e.g. Linguistic Annotations), Bias Mitigation, Explainability Enhancement.

The PhD candidate will work on tasks related to the aforementioned objectives in a multidisciplinary environment. This will allow the PhD candidate to gain expertise from the fields of Computational Linguistics, Computer Science, Engineering, Data Analysis, Machine- and Deep-Learning, and Cognitive Science.

Job description

* Develop and conduct research; * Write and defend a thesis within 4 years; * Write peer-reviewed papers for submission to international journals or leading conference proceedings in the first 3 years; * Give presentations about study results on a regular basis on workshops and conferences; * Participate in co-organising workshops; * Participate in ISMT and CSAI activities; * Participate in the Graduate Schools’ education program.

Your Profile Candidates for this position should have a (research) Masters’ degree in:

Artificial Intelligence and / or Computational linguistics with focus in at least one of the following fields: computational linguistics, natural language processing, machine translation, machine learning, data analysis and/or deep learning.

In addition, we invite applicants who have a strong profile in a subset of these:

* Interest in languages, NLP and/or Linguistics; * Excellent analytical and problem-solving abilities; * Ability to work both independently and collaboratively as part of a team to drive innovative research; * Proficiency in scientific programming languages, particularly Python (Numpy, Pandas, Matplotlib, Scikit-Learn, Tensorflow, PyTorch, etc.); * Some experience with (experimental) evaluation and statistical analyses; * Fluent spoken and written English communication skills; * Have a proactive and goal-directed attitude, good organizational skills, and the ability to get things done.

Knowledge of another language than English (default language of communication) and / or Dutch is not an obligation but would be a major advantage given the research topic.

Conditions of employment Fixed-term contract: 4 years. A full-time position. Starting date is negotiable.

The selected candidate will start with a contract at Tilburg University at the Department of Cognitive Science and Artificial Intelligence for one year, concluded by an evaluation. Upon a positive outcome of the first-year evaluation, the candidate will be offered an employment contract for an additional 3 years.

The PhD candidate will be ranked in the Dutch university job ranking system (UFO) as a PhD-student (promovendus) with a starting fulltime salary of  € 2,770 gross per month in the first year, increasing up to € 3,539 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 temporary tax-free allowance equal to 30% of their taxable salary. The University will apply for such an allowance on their behalf;

The University will provide assistance in finding suitable accommodation (for foreign employees);

Tilburg University is rated among the top Dutch employers and offers very good fringe benefits (it is one of the best non-profit employers in the Netherlands), also including excellent technical infrastructure, savings schemes and excellent sport facilities. The collective labor agreement of the Dutch Universities applies.

Who we are The CSAI department (https://csai.nl) The Cognitive Science & Artificial Intelligence (CS&AI) department performs computational research in the domains of Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Science and runs educational programs on Cognitive Science & Artificial Intelligence and Data Science and Society. The department is partially housed on Tilburg University campus (Dante Building) and in the Deprez building (near Tilburg central station) as member of MindLabshttps://www.mind-labs.eu/. We maintain a close collaboration with the Jheronimus Academy of Data Science (JADS) in ‘s-Hertogenbosch.

We are member of the Benelux Association for Artificial Intelligencehttp://ii.tudelft.nl/bnvki/ (BNVKI), participate in the Special Interest Group for AIhttp://ii.tudelft.nl/bnvki/?page_id=1247 (SIG AI), contributed to the Dutch AI Manifestohttp://ii.tudelft.nl/bnvki/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/Dutch-AI-Manifesto.pdf, and participate in the Confederation of Laboratories for Artificial Intelligence Research in Europehttps://claire-ai.org/ (CLAIRE).

The research group consists of about 70 researchers covering a broad range of topics relevant for cognitive science and artificial intelligence, and this includes approximately 35 PhD students. Core research domains include cognitive science, machine learning, deep learning, games, virtual reality, computational psycholinguistics, brain-computer interfaces, robotics, cognitive modeling of language, computational linguistics, educational technologies, computational modeling of evolutionary and adaptive systems, image and signal processing, with a strong emphasis on quantitative methods.

The ISMT Lab (https://www.tilburguniversity.edu/about/schools/tshd/departments/dca/lab/mac...)

Machine translation (MT), the task of automatically translating text in one language into text in another language using a computer system, has undergone many shifts since its inception in the late 1950s. The latest of which, neural machine translation (NMT), has reached unprecedented translation qualities at almost human-level performance, of course for some use-cases and under certain conditions.

MT has become an indispensable tool for professional translators (to assist in the translation workflow), for commercial users, e.g., e-commerce companies (to make their content quickly available in multiple languages), to every-day users (to access information unrestricted by the language in which it is produced).

User- and use-case-centric MT We focus on the specific user requirements as well as the domain, the language, the style, etc. of a specific use-case. Through smart data analysis, selection and processing and optimized models we investigate faster and better tools that are tuned towards users and use-cases.

Inclusive Language Technology Current MT and NLP models exacerbate bias and may produce inaccurate or sometimes even offensive outputs. We explore bias-related language phenomena and develop techniques to mitigate bias is an important research direction we are undertaking.

Sustainable and Environmentally Conscious AI We study the environmental impact of language technology and ways to cut down the use of computing resources without losing quality. Can we reduce, reuse and reorganize for a less intrusive technology?

More information This PhD project is expected to start at the beginning of 2024; the preferred start date is February 1st 2024.

For more information on this position or the project, please contact: dr. Eva Vanmassenhove (E.O.J.Vanmassenhove@tilburguniversity.edumailto:E.O.J.Vanmassenhove@tilburguniversity.edu), or dr. Frédéric Blain (F.L.G.Blain@tilburguniversity.edumailto:F.L.G.Blain@tilburguniversity.edu)

Applications To apply for this position please submit a motivation letter, CV, thesis (and any publications), grade list and names of two references.

The only way to apply is online. Deadline for applications: November 15th 2023. Interviews are expected to take place in the beginning of December 2023.

Tilburg School of Humanities and Digital Sciences

Research and education at the Tilburg School of Humanities and Digital Sciences (TSHD) has a unique focus on humans in the context of the globalizing digital society, on the development of artificial intelligence and interactive technologies, on their impact on communication, culture and society, and on moral and existential challenges that arise. The School of Humanities and Digital Sciences consists of four departments: Communication and Cognition, Cognitive Science and Artificial Intelligence, Culture Studies and Philosophy; several research institutes and a faculty office. Also the University College Tilburg is part of the School. Each year around 275 students commence a Bachelor or (Pre) Master Program. The School has approximately 2000 students and 250 employees.

Tilburg School of Humanities and Digital Scienceshttps://www.tilburguniversity.edu/about/schools/humanities/

-------- Met hartelijke groeten/With kind regards, Fred Blain

Assistant Professor in AI Department of Cognitive Science & Artificial Intelligence Dante Building, D144 Tilburg School of Humanities and Digital Sciences Tilburg University, The Netherlands