Speech and Language Processing

The Centre for Acoustic Signal Processing Research (CASPR) at the Section for Signal and Information Processing, Department of Electronic Systems, Aalborg University, Denmark, will have a number of fully funded PhD stipends available in 2017. According to the Shanghai/ARWU World Rank 2016, Aalborg University is no. 7 in the world within the field of Electronic and Electrical Engineering. The Department of Electronic Systems at Aalborg University is internationally recognized in particular for its contributions within Information and Communication Technology (ICT).

CASPR is a newly founded centre with focus on conducting research related to advanced statistical signal processing solutions for assistive listening devices. The scientific scope of the PhD stipends will include (but is not limited to): signal processing, machine learning, information and communication theory with applications to wireless exchange of information between listening devices and other external devices, pattern recognition and data mining in body worn sensor data, and perception-based statistical signal processing.

We are looking for highly motivated, independent, and outstanding students that desire to do a successful 3-year PhD programme at Aalborg University. The ideal candidates must have strong expertise in one or more of the following disciplines; statistical signal processing, auditory perception, machine learning, information theory, or estimation theory. Good English verbal and written skills are a must. Excellent undergraduate and master degree grades are desired.

PhD positions in Denmark are fully funded, i.e. no tuition fees, and come with a salary. The salary is subject to a pay grade system based on prior working experience since completing your undergraduate degree. The yearly gross salary is in the range 41.500 – 50.100 Euros.

You may obtain further information about the PhD stipends from Associate Professor Jan Østergaard (jo@es.aau.dk), Associate Professor Zheng-Hua Tan (zt@es.aau.dk), or Professor Jesper Jensen (jje@es.aau.dk), CASPR, Aalborg University, concerning the scientific aspects of the stipends. You may also visit caspr.es.aau.dk for more information about the centre and open PhD vacancies. 

A computational speech and language postdoctoral position is available in the University of Pittsburgh Department of Neurosurgery’s Brain Modulation Laboratory. The Postdoctoral Fellow will work closely with a mentorship team led by Julie Fiez, Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience, in collaboration with co-mentors Mark Richardson, Professor of Neurological Surgery, and Diane Litman, Professor of Computer Science.  This position provides guaranteed funding for at least 3 years, through a recently awarded BRAIN Initiative grant (Research Opportunities Using Invasive Neural Recording and Stimulating Technologies in the Human Brain, U01), for which Dr. Richardson is the PI. The U01 project will use invasive deep brain electrical recording and stimulation in patients with Parkinson’s disease to study subcortical contributions to speech production.

Research Description:  An abstract of the U01 grant can be found here: https://goo.gl/IzfOFn

The Fellow will be part of a multidisciplinary project involving researchers affiliated with the University of Pittsburgh, Carnegie Mellon University and Johns Hopkins. In Pittsburgh, the research group includes Michael Walsh Dickey (Communication Science and Disorders; speech comprehension and aphasia), Julie Fiez (Psychology; neural basis of speech, language and reading), Lori Holt (Psychology; auditory and speech processing and learning), Diane Litman (Computer Science; computational paralinguistics via machine learning and acoustic-prosodic analysis of speech), Tom Mitchell (Machine Learning; neural basis of word processing), Mark Richardson (Neurosurgery; human neurophysiology and clinical use of deep brain stimulation), Susan Shaiman (Communication Science and Disorders; normal and disordered motor speech control), and Rob Turner (Neurobiology; basal ganglia neurophysiology). 

Job Responsibilities: Assume an integrated role in all aspects of 1) task design, stimulus creation, and administration of behavioral protocols, 2) data collection: advisory role for pre- and post-surgical speech data collection, as well as speech data acquired intraoperatively during DBS implantation surgeries, 3) data analysis: performed independently, including application of speech processing and machine learning algorithms to analyzed collected data, and 4) manuscript and grant writing.

Job Requirements: Ph.D. in computer science, linguistics, psychology, neuroscience, communication science, or equivalent; previous research experience in computational or neurolinguistics, preferably expertise in acoustic signal processing and behavioral studies of human speech, and the ability to design and write scripts independently in R, MATLAB,  and related software. Superior organizational skills and attention to detail; ability to thrive independently, in addition to working with others; ability to handle fluctuating priorities, deadlines and changes in the clinical schedule. A good publishing record; passion for interdisciplinary speech-language research.

The Faculty of Engineering and the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft invite applications for a

W2 Professorship for Speech Coding

at the Department of Electrical, Electronic, and Communication Engineering and International Audio Laboratories Erlangen to be filled by the earliest possible starting date for a period of five years.

The appointed professor will take on a leadership function at the Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits IIS.

The successful candidate is expected to represent the field of speech coding adequately in research and teaching. Their work may focus on modern methods for low bit-rate combined speech and audio coding, distributed speech coding, and/or speech transformation.

The successful candidate is expected to contribute to international degree programmes at the Faculty.

For further information on the position and how to apply please see
https://www.fau.de/universitaet/stellen-praktika-und-jobs/ausgeschriebene-professuren/

Please submit your complete application documents (CV, list of publications, list of lectures and courses taught, certified copies of certificates and degrees, list of ­third-party funding) online at www.berufungen.fau.de by 31.08.2016. If you have any questions please contact tf-dekanat@fau.de.
 

About Maluuba

The Maluuba team is driven by a single defining purpose: to expose the potential of natural language process to the world and empower modern day smart devices and services. We’re pushing the boundaries of voice search with our commitment building state of the art technology in the fields of NLP, Machine Learning and AI. To date, our technology is present in tens of millions smart devices around the world in various languages. Join us and help invent the future!                    

About the Job

Maluuba is seeking a Deep Learning Researcher to design and develop deep learning models for natural language and conversational dialogue systems. Candidates must have hands-on experience with at least one of recurrent neural networks, deep convolutional neural networks and/or recursive neural networks. Successful candidates will be required to productively contribute to a team and may have to solve research and engineering problems related to training / deployment of models. You will have the opportunity to test your knowledge in a challenging problem-solving environment. You will be encouraged to think out-of-the-box, innovate and find solutions to real-life problems.

Requirements

• Ph.D. or Masters in CS Machine Learning, Statistics or a related field
• Experience applying deep learning approaches
• Hands on experience with Python
• Knowledge of Java or C/C++ is a plus
• Strong scientific curiosity and initiative
• Ability to work as part of a team
• Hands on experience with at least one of the following tools: Theano, Pylearn/Pylearn2 , Torch or a similar toolkit

Feel free to check out our company page for a deeper look, but the gist is that our atmosphere is friendly, energetic and light hearted while remaining productive. Our kitchen is fully supplied with lots of food and drinks; we provide daily lunch, dinner and snacks for all employees. We even have weekly Maluuba soccer games and bi-weekly movie nights. Join us and help invent the future.

Faculty Opening The Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering at Anadolu University invites applications for faculty positions at all levels in the areas of

• VLSI Circuit and Systems, Systems-on-Chip, Computer-Aided Design and Synthesis,
• Microwave Circuits and Antennas,
• Wireless Communications, Wireless Networks, Telecommunication Networks,
• MEMS.

Applicants must have completed (or be completing) a PhD in electrical and/or electronics engineering, must have demonstrated the ability to pursue a program of research, and must have a strong commitment to graduate and undergraduate teaching. A successful candidate will be expected to teach courses at the graduate and undergraduate levels, and to build a team of graduate students in PhD research. Preferred starting date is Autumn 2015, but is negotiable. The review of applications will begin immediately, and applications will be accepted until the vacancies are filled. Further information about the department can be found at http://eem.anadolu.edu.tr. Applicants should electronically submit a cover letter, a current CV, a three-year research plan, a statement of teaching interests, and the names of three references to Professor Hüseyin Akçay, Head of Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, Anadolu University.

For inquiry, please call 222-3350580-Ex 6459 or email huakcay@anadolu.edu.tr. Anadolu University is a public institution located in Eskişehir. The medium of instruction is English. The university attracts significant amount of government funding through its Distance Learning Program, which enables the department to offer a competitive salary and benefit package comparable to leading private Turkish universities, and present professional development opportunities in various forms for young faculty.

Multiple post-doc openings are available on projects involving speech and language processing at TTI-Chicago. Details are available here: Multi-view representation learning: http://ttic.edu/livescu/postdoc.html American Sign Language recognition and analysis: http://ttic.edu/livescu/ASL-postdoc.html TTIC is an independent graduate computer science institute on the University of Chicago campus, with vibrant research groups in machine learning, speech and language processing, computer vision, computational biology, and theory of computation. For more on speech and language at TTIC, see http://ttic.edu/livescu/SLATTIC

Post-doc position in speech processing research at SUTD, Singapore Project Teaching and Learning English Pronunciation by Generating the Vocal Tract Shapes from the Frequency Domain Information
(This is a new project funded by the very competitive MOE Academies Fund (MAF) for 24 months. PI: Dr. Simon Lui, SUTD)

Description: The purpose of this project is to develop an interactive app for both mobile devices and the Internet that helps learners improve their pronunciation through the provision of a real time visual representation of their vocal tract shapes. Through such feedback, it is envisaged that learners will be able to learn how to modify their tongue position, lip shape and height of their tongue in the oral cavity to “match” the vocal tract shape of the normed vocal pattern of that particular sound. For example, learners articulating the high front unrounded vowel /e/ will be able to see their vocal tract shape against an outline or indicators that present the desired or targeted vocal tract shape. Such normed or targeted patterns, for the purposes of the project, will be assumed to be the standard British English, which is the generally accepted norm for Singapore schools.

Skill requirement 1. Audio information retrieval (e.g. MFCC, LPC, FFT, formant analysis) 2. Machine learning (e.g. (Deep) Neural network, Bayesian network, SVM, HMM, PCA) 3. Experience on speech research (e.g. vocal tract area function, pronunciation visualization) or audio research (Optional) experience in mobile web app programming Duty 1. Human voice to vocal tract shape conversion research. 2. Data mining and machine learning model construction of speech and vocal tract shape features. 3. Assist in developing an educational app (with an audio app developer). 4. Subject test (work with a local English teacher) More information at: http://www.simonlui.com/job/

About The Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD) and the SUTD Audio Research Group (ARG): Established in collaboration with MIT, The SUTD ARG is a brand new group formed by young and energetic faculties/researchers with strong passion on novel and pioneer audio research. We are in collaboration with Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU), The National University of Singapore (NUS), Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST), and Purdue University Calumet. We also have various industry partners including Apple Inc, SingTel, HTC Singapore, Sennheiser, as well as close connection with the music production individuals.

The SUTD ARG is currently working on these projects:
- Teaching and Learning English Pronunciation by Generating the Vocal Tract Shapes from the Frequency Domain Information.
- SYNCBEAT: A personalised music-aid application to enhance auditory-motor synchronization in running.
- Horn detection under noisy road traffic.
- A Real Time Common Chord Progression Guide on the Smartphone.
- A Musical, Mobile System for Affective Neurofeedback.

Application: Please send a letter of interest and a CV to Dr. Simon LUI - simon_lui@sutd.edu.sg
Recruitment will continue until all positions are filled.

TTI-Chicago invites applications for faculty positions at the level of tenure-track and senior (tenured) professor, endowed three-year Research Assistant Professor, and visiting professor. Hiring is taking place in all research areas, including speech and language processing. TTI-Chicago is a philanthropically endowed, academic computer science institute situated on the University of Chicago campus, and is dedicated to basic research and graduate education in computer science. Tenure-track faculty teach one quarter per year. Research faculty have no teaching duties, but have the opportunity to teach and co-advise students. Current faculty with interests in speech and language include Sadaoki Furui, David McAllester, Karen Livescu, Matthew Walter, Kevin Gimpel, and Mohit Bansal. To learn more or to apply, see http://www.ttic.edu/faculty-hiring.php. For additional information about the speech and language areas, please contact Kevin Gimpel at kgimpel@ttic.edu or Karen Livescu at klivescu@ttic.edu.