The newly established research group on

 "Computational Models of Misunderstanding for Complex Instructional Text"

invites applications for two PhD positions or one postdoc and one PhD
student. The posts are funded through a grant in the Emmy Noether
Programme of the German Research Foundation (DFG---Deutsche Forschungs-
gemeinschaft), which provides funding for independent junior research
groups (similar to an ERC Starting Grant / NSF CAREER Award). The group is
headed by Michael Roth[1] and will be located at the Institute for Natural
Language Processing at the University of Stuttgart[2] in Germany.

The project will be concerned with the systematic analysis and
computational modelling of text passages that can lead to
misunderstandings. A substantial amount of previous work has studied
misunderstandings in dialogue, but suitable resources for written language
are scarce because misunderstandings cannot be observed directly from a
text. Since readers and writers typically do not interact, it is important
for authors to ensure that texts leave no room for misinterpretation.
Otherwise, for example, medical instructions may be followed incorrectly,
and route directions may not guide navigators to their desired
destination. The goal of this project is to create the resources and
methods necessary to prevent such outcomes.

The announced positions will be part of a collaborative research effort,
which includes local contributors as well as collaborations with external
partners at the University of Edinburgh and Pompeu Fabra University in
Barcelona. One of the available positions will focus on the linguistic
analysis and modelling of potential sources of misunderstanding, as well
as on extrinsic evaluations within semantic analysis tasks (e.g. semantic
role labelling). The focus of the other position will be on developing 
neural end-to-end models and adaptations to downstream applications (e.g.
machine translation). Both positions will be available for three years,
starting in March 2019 or as soon as possible thereafter. The salary
is according to salary group TV-L E13, 75% for PhD students (approx. 3,000
EUR gross per month) and up to 100% for postdocs (approx. 4,000 EUR).

Successful applicants will have a background in linguistics, machine
learning, and/or computational linguistics, with a particular interest in
semantics and pragmatics. Programming skills and the ability to work in a
group are taken for granted. The candidate should be able to work and
communicate in English (no proficiency of German is required).
Applications should include a brief motivation letter including research
interests, a CV, a list of publications (if applicable), and contact
information of up to three references. Applications should be sent to
Michael Roth by email. Applications received by 1 December will receive
full consideration, but the positions will remain open until filled.


[1] http://www.coli.uni-saarland.de/~mroth/
[2] http://www.ims.uni-stuttgart.de/