1 Postdoctoral Researcher in Statistical Machine Translation in Netherlands | University of Amsterdam (UvA)

The SLPL Lab of the Institute for Logic, Language and Computation (ILLC) is seeking to attract a postdoctoral researcher in Statistical Machine Translation for a fixed term of two years. The postdoc position is part of the SLPL Lab, led by Professor Khalil Sima'an. SLPL currently has 7 PhD candidates, 3 postdoctoral researchers and two research assistants working on five ongoing externally funded projects, including a Vici, H2020 QT21, ITN EXPERT, an Open Competition and an STW project.

The postdoctoral researcher will be expected to fulfil the following tasks:

• conduct research in (preferably hierarchical) statistical machine translation with particular interest in word-order, morphology, semantics and other specific challenges;
• present and publish research findings together with SLPL team members in proceedings and journals;
• program and test the developed algorithms in prototype systems and make these usable for other team members;
• assist in guiding PhD and MSc students working on topics in Computational Linguistics at large;
• while this is primarily a research position, the successful candidate will be expected to also make a minor contribution to teaching.

Requirements

Prospective candidates should:

• hold a PhD degree in statistical natural language processing or a related research area with experience in statistical machine translation;
• have a proven track record of excellence in research, as witnessed by a strong publication list in relevant first tier conference proceedings or journals;
• have a proven experience in and affinity with programming and empirical experimentation with text (parallel) corpora;
• have strong passion for research, a drive to publish and the wish to learn new skills through working with or assisting in guiding PhD and MSc students as well as teaching;
• have good communication skills in English, both oral and written.

Conditions of employment

The full-time appointment (38 hours per week) will be on a temporary basis, initially for one year with an extension for another year on positive evaluation. Depending on experience, the gross monthly salary will range from €3,044 in the first year to €3,996 (scale 10), excl. 8% holiday allowance and 8,3% annual bonus.