PhD candidate in Academic Search

The Informatics Institute (IvI) of the University of Amsterdam (UvA) invites applications for a PhD position for four years. The position is part of the …

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Arbeidsvoorwaarden

Standplaats:: Spui, Amsterdam, Noord-Holland
Dienstverband:: Tijdelijk contract / Tijdelijke opdracht
Uren per week:: 38 uur

Salarisindicatie:: € 2222 - € 2840 per maand
Opleidingsniveau:: WO

Functieomschrijving

The Informatics Institute (IvI) of the University of Amsterdam (UvA) invites applications for a PhD position for four years. The position is part of the project 'Re-SEARCH: Contextual Search for Scientific Research Data', which is jointly funded by Elsevier and NWO.

Project description

Scientific, technical and medical knowledge is built on research data. It increasingly plays a similar role in the social sciences and humanities. Research datasets are either deposited by researchers or automatically extracted from publications. The Re-SEARCH project proposes to create open source search and recommendation solutions for research datasets so as to enable their re-use.

Within the Re-SEARCH project, the PhD candidate that we are looking to hire will work on search technology for dataset retrieval. The PhD candidate will be based at UvA but the team as a whole will have regular meetings at Elsevier’s Amsterdam offices.

This PhD position is focused on learning to rank methods for research datasets. You will design and evaluate algorithms aimed at ranking research datasets in response to a query or as part of recommendations to users interested in a scientific topic. You will focus on unsupervised or weakly supervised scenarios. You can build on semantic enrichments as well as insights in research dataset use and user behaviour developed within the team.

Tasks

Conduct computer science research with a special focus on academic search and research data;
publish in top tier conferences and journals in relevant areas;
provide teaching assistance (10%);
complete a PhD thesis.

Functie-eisen

MSc degree in computer science or artificial intelligence;
a demonstrable background in information retrieval and machine learning;
excellent software engineering skills, English language skills, social skills, and team spirit.

The candidates should appreciate an international and highly interdisciplinary environment in which academic-industrial collaboration is central.

Conditions

The appointment will be on a temporary basis for a period of 4 years (initial appointment will be for a period of 18 months and after satisfactory evaluation it can be extended for a total duration of 48 months) and should lead to a dissertation (PhD thesis). We will draft an educational plan that includes attendance of courses and (international) meetings. We also expect you to assist in teaching of bachelor and master students.

Based on a full-time appointment (38 hours per week) the gross monthly salary will range from €2,222 (first year) to €2,840 (last year). There are also secondary benefits, such as 8% holiday allowance per year and the end of year allowance of 8.3%. The Collective Labour Agreement of Dutch Universities is applicable.

Among other things, we offer:

competitive pay and excellent benefits;
extremely friendly working environment;
high-level of interaction;
international environment (10+ nationalities in the group);
access to high-end computing facilities (cluster with 4,000+ cores);
new building located near the city center (10 minutes by bicycle) of one of Europe’s most beautiful and lively cities.

Since Amsterdam is a very international city where almost everybody speaks and understands English, candidates need not be afraid of the language barrier.

Additional information

For further information please contact:

prof. Maarten de Rijke
T: +31 20 525 5358

You may only submit your application by electronic mail using this link.

We will accept applications until 4 July 2018.

To process your application immediately, please quote the vacancy number: 18-344.

Please do not send or copy your application to Prof. Maarten de Rijke – it will get lost.

The committee does not guarantee that late or incomplete applications will be considered.

In the research statement (see below) you should clearly describe your research vision in relation to the topics that we described, as well as a clear statement which would be your direction of research.

Candidates should also include the following information, in separate PDF files (not zipped), using surname, initials and a self-evident word as file names, e.g. , Smith J CV:

a curriculum vitae (including an url allowing download of pdf of MSc. thesis -- if relevant);
a letter of motivation (at most 1 page) explaining why you are interested in this position;
a research statement (at most 2 pages), explaining your research interests and how you think they can be related to the topics mentioned in the Job description above;
a list of all university courses taken, including a transcript of grades;
the name and contact details (including email address) of two – three referees who can provide details about your profile (one of whom should be the main supervisor of your Master thesis).