Working at the Faculty of Science (University of Amsterdam)
The Faculty of Science occupies a leading position internationally in its fields of research and participates in a large number of cooperative programmes with universities, research institutes and businesses. The faculty has a student body of around 3,000 and 1,500 members of staff, spread over eight research institutes and a number of faculty-wide support services. A considerable part of the research is made possible by external funding from Dutch and international organisations and the private sector. The Faculty of Science offers thirteen Bachelor's degree programmes and eighteen Master’s degree programmes in the fields of the exact sciences, computer science and information studies, and life and earth sciences.
Since September 2010, the whole faculty has been housed in a brand new building at the Science Park in Amsterdam. The instalment of the faculty has made the Science Park one of the largest centres of academic research in the Netherlands.
The Informatics Institute (IvI) is one of the large research institutes with the faculty, with a focus on complex information systems divided in two broad themes: “Computational Systems” and “Intelligent Systems.” The institute has a prominent international standing and is active in a dynamic scientific area, with a strong innovative character and an extensive portfolio of externally funded projects.
The Intelligent Systems Lab Amsterdam of the Informatics Institute has a vacancy for
Two PhD Students for the “Semantic search in E-discovery”-project
for 38 hours per week
vacancy number W12-022
The project is funded by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO). Within the project, ISLA collaborates with the Hogeschool van Amsterdam, Fox-IT Forensics as well forensics and intelligence agencies. In e-discovery, digital information (e-mails, discussion forums) is mined to find answers to questions such as “Who knew what, at which time, and from whom?” So far, traditional information retrieval technology is typically used for this purpose. The project aims to develop semantic search technology to the task, so as to facilitate finding entities, attributes and relations between entities, thereby facilitating more efficient and effective information access for forensic researchers.
Within the project, two PhD students will be employed. One will focus on using semantic information for information retrieval purposes, the other will focus on automatically identifying semantic information, using machine learning.
Requirements
We are looking for students with a master’s degree in computer science, artificial intelligence or computational linguistics, with demonstrable interest in search technology, machine learning and/or language technology, and in working with large amounts of data. Strong programming skills, proficiency in Dutch and a background in one or more of the following areas are a plus: social network analysis, statistical analysis. We are looking for self-starters that are able to work in a large team.
Appointment
The appointment will be full time (38 hours a week) for a period of four years (initial employment is 18 months and after a positive evaluation, the appointment will be extended further with 30 months) and should lead to a dissertation (PhD thesis). An educational plan that includes attendance of courses and national and international meetings will be drafted. The salary is in accordance with the university regulations for academic personnel. The PhD student salary will range from € 2.042,-- (first year) up to a maximum of € 2.612,-- (last year) before tax per month (scale P) based on a full-time appointment. The holiday allowance is 8% of the annual gross income and 8.3% end of the year bonus. The collective employment agreement of Dutch universities is applicable.
Job application
Applications, only by electronic mail, must be sent to application-science@uva.nl addressed to University of Amsterdam, Faculty of Science, Personnel Dept., attn. J.C. Knaap-Cabi, should include a letter of motivation, a curriculum vitae, references and any supporting material. To process your application immediately, please quote the vacancy number in the subject line.
The closing date for applications is 25 February 2012