Cambridge Centre for PhD studentship in Natural Language Processing (Fixed Term)
Faculty of Modern and Medieval Languages and Linguistics, Cambridge
Applications are invited for a three-year PhD studentship in Natural Language Processing, with a specific focus on conversational AI, in particular on the development of statistical dialogue systems. Although current dialogue systems are capable of supporting humans in many practical tasks, they are limited to a small set of resource-rich languages (e.g., English and German). Extending the scope to additional languages is important for improving the usability and global reach of this technology. The studentship will focus on this research problem, with the overall goal of developing methodology that enables the development of multilingual dialogue systems.
Responsibilities of the successful candidate include research into novel techniques for natural language understanding in dialogue systems, drawing from recent advances in the areas of multilingual NLP and machine learning (in particular on representation learning). The post holder will also take part in performance evaluation, and dissemination of research findings.
The successful applicant will have a good Master's degree (equivalent of first-class distinction) in computational linguistics, artificial intelligence, computer science, or a related discipline, completed by 30 September 2021. They will have strong programming skills and previous experience in NLP and/or machine learning. Previous experience with statistical dialogue systems, multilingual NLP and representation learning is considered an advantage.
The PhD student will work with Professor Anna Korhonen and Dr Ivan Vulic as part of the vibrant and highly research-active Language Technology Lab (http://ltl.mml.cam.ac.uk) and the larger community of researchers who conduct cutting-edge research into NLP and AI within the University of Cambridge.