[oor-forum] 15 PhD positions on Question Answering in 4 EU countries; information event 21 Jan @ Bonn, Germany; apply by February

[Christoph LANGE]

WDAqua (Answering Questions using Web Data), a Marie Skłodowska-Curie 
International Training Network (ITN), is seeking 15 highly skilled PhD 
candidates.

http://www.iai.uni-bonn.de/~langec/wdaqua/

== Essential Facts ==

PhD students in WDAqua will spend 3 years working at one of 6 research 
institutions in Europe (France, Germany, Greece, UK), will participate 
in an outstanding web science and data science training programme, and 
will have the chance to visit other of these organisations plus further 
application partners. The gross monthly salary (including social 
security, before taxes) is 3,110 € (adjusted depending on the country of 
employment) plus a mobility allowance of 600 €/month and, if applicable, 
a family allowance of 500 €/month.

== Timeline ==

21 January 2015: information event in Bonn, Germany (exact schedule to 
be announced)
February 2015: application deadline (for exact dates, see the partners’ 
specific job postings)
March 2015: first job offers made to successful applicants
July 2015–June 2018: typical duration of a PhD in WDAqua

== Background ==

Smart infrastructures and citizens’ participation in the digital society 
are increasingly data-driven. Sharing, connecting, managing, analysing 
and understanding data on the Web will enable better services for 
citizens, communities and industry. However, turning web data into 
successful services for the public and private sector requires skilled 
web and data scientists, and it still requires further research. WDAqua 
aims at advancing the state of the art by intertwining training, 
research and innovation efforts, centred around data-driven question 
answering. Question answering is immediately useful to a wide audience 
of end users, and we will demonstrate this in settings including 
e-commerce, public sector information, publishing and smart cities. 
Steps to answering a question are (1) understanding a spoken question, 
(2) analysing the question’s text, (3) finding data to answer the 
question, and (4) presenting the answer(s). Every individual research 
project in WDAqua connects at least two of these steps.

== Partners and Projects ==

Further details to be found on the homepage: 
http://www.iai.uni-bonn.de/~langec/wdaqua/

University of Bonn, Germany
3 positions (one of them with a dual degree with Saint-Étienne)
Topics: linked data publishing, data quality assessment, data cleaning, 
federated queries

University of Athens, Greece
2 positions
Topics: dataset alignment and merging, user interaction, interactive 
disambiguation

Université Jean Monnet Saint-Étienne, France
3 positions (two of them with dual degrees with Bonn)
Topics: provenance, trust, link discovery, data dynamicity and 
evolution, named entity recognition, disambiguation, reasoning

Fraunhofer Institute for Intelligent Analysis and Information Systems 
(IAIS), Germany
2 positions (PhD awarded by the University of Bonn, one position with a 
dual degree with Saint-Étienne)
Topics: cloud computing, plugin architecture, voice input, natural 
language processing

University of Southampton, UK
3 positions
Topics: visualisation, verbalisation, natural language synthesis, 
interaction flows, information discovery

Open Data Institute, UK
2 positions (PhD awarded by the University of Southampton)
Topics: visualisation, verbalisation, data licensing, pricing of 
services, privacy

Partner organisations (where PhD students may spend secondments):
* Antidot, France
* ATC Innovation Lab, Greece
* Data Publica, France
* Fundacio Barcelona Media/Yahoo Labs, Spain
* Unister Research & Development, Germany
* Wolters Kluwer Strategy and Innovation, Germany

== How to apply ==

The individual project partners make individual, specific job postings 
(accessible from http://www.iai.uni-bonn.de/~langec/wdaqua/). Candidates 
apply for individual jobs, with individual organisations, as listed above.

The ideal candidate must not have resided for more than 12 months in the 
country of their employment in the 3 years before starting to work. He 
or she holds a degree in computer science or a related field and is able 
to combine theory and practice in her/his work. Fluent English 
communication and a passion for developing modern software solutions 
(e.g. in Java/Scala, JavaScript) are fundamental requirements. Command 
of  the language of the country of employment is a plus but not 
required. The candidate should have experience and commitment to work in 
teams and on the forefront of research in one of the following fields:

* semantic web technologies and linked data
* knowledge representations and ontology engineering
* software engineering and modern application development
* database technologies and data integration
* HCI and user interface design for Web content
* data analytics

Application deadlines will be in February; each organisation will define 
a specific date. You will need to submit a CV, university transcripts, a 
motivation letter including a short research plan targeted to one of the 
above projects, two letters of recommendation and English writing sample 
(e.g. prior publication or master thesis excerpt). The individual 
organisations will announce specific requirements and guidelines.

== Questions? ==

The information event on 21 January is a good opportunity to ask 
questions. You may also, at any time, email or phone
Christoph Lange
WDAqua assistant coordinator
langec at cs.uni-bonn.de
Phone +49 2241 14-2428
http://langec.wordpress.com/contact/

-- 
Christoph Lange, Enterprise Information Systems Department
Applied Computer Science @ University of Bonn; Fraunhofer IAIS
http://langec.wordpress.com/about, Skype duke4701