Speech and Language Processing

The University of Eastern Finland, UEF, is one of the largest multidisciplinary universities in Finland. We offer education in nearly one hundred major subjects, and are home to approximately 15,500 students and 2,500 members of staff. We operate in Joensuu and Kuopio. In international rankings, we are ranked among the leading universities in the world.

The Faculty of Science and Forestry operates on the Kuopio and Joensuu campuses of the University of Eastern Finland. The mission of the faculty is to carry out internationally recognised scientific research and to offer research-education in the fields of natural sciences and forest sciences. The faculty invests in all of the strategic research areas of the university. The faculty’s environments for research and learning are international, modern and multidisciplinary.  The faculty has approximately 3,800 Bachelor’s and Master’s degree students and some 490 postgraduate students. The number of staff amounts to 560. http://www.uef.fi/en/lumet/etusivu

We are now inviting applications for 

two Postdoctoral Researcher/Project Researcher positions in speech processing funded by the Academy of Finland at the School of Computing, Joensuu Campus.

• One position in machine learning for speaker modelling (e.g. speaker verification, voice anti-spoofing, voice conversion, text-to-speech, or similar)
• One position in perceptual and/or acoustic speaker characterization (e.g. phonetics/linguistics, speech modelling, statistical methods)

Both positions are filled in the Academy of Finland funded NOTCH research project (NOn-cooperaTive speaker CHaracterization), led by Associate Professor Tomi H. Kinnunen. The project aims at advancing the state-of-the-art in automatic speaker verification (defence) and voice conversion (attack) under a generic umbrella of non-cooperative speech, whether being induced by spoofing attacks, disguise, or other less expected intentional voice modifications. The NOTCH project applies multi-disciplinary research methods. The ideal candidate for the first position will have a background in machine learning or signal processing for speaker modelling and characterization. You may have a background in recognition, conversion or synthesis methods, as long as you are seasoned in state-of-the-art machine learning theory and practice (especially deep learning). The ideal candidate for the second position will have a background in acoustic-phonetic or perceptual methods for speaker characterization and will be fluent in devising novel statistical analysis methods such as linear mixed effect models. For both positions, multi-disciplinary thinking and willingness to contribute to both themes is considered a plus.

The Computational Speech Group of the School of Computing (https://www.uef.fi/web/speech/) , formed officially in 2018, works in the facilities of Joensuu Science Park, provides access to a modern research infrastructure and is a strongly international working environment. We are a group of dedicated individuals who do not want to follow a linear research path – we keep our mind open to high-risk new directions and collaborations. We hosted the Odyssey 2014 conference, were a partner in the H2020-funded OCTAVE project, and are known as a co-founder of the Automatic Speaker Verification and Countermeasures (ASVspoof) challenge series (http://www.asvspoof.org/). Joensuu, a friendly city “in the middle of KNOWhere” (as one of UEF’s slogans say) of about 115,000 inhabitants, is compact and contains all the necessary services within walking distance, with low living expenses and excellent opportunities for many outdoor activities. Despite its remote location, Joensuu is very international thanks to many of UEF’s international collaboration programmes and a vibrant student community.  

A person to be appointed as a postdoctoral researcher shall hold a suitable doctoral degree that has been awarded less than five years ago. If the doctoral degree has been awarded more than five years ago, the post will be one of a project researcher. The doctoral degree should be in spoken language technology, electrical engineering, computer science, machine learning or a closely related field. Researchers finishing their PhD in the near future are also encouraged to apply for the positions. However, they are expected to hold a PhD degree by the starting date of the position. We expect strong hands-on experience and a creative, out-of-the-box problem solving attitude. A successful applicant needs to have an internationally proven track record in topics relevant to the project he or she applies to.

English may be used as the language of instruction and supervision in these positions.

The positions will be filled from earliest April 1, 2019 for a minimum period of 12 months. The continuation of the positions will be agreed separately. The positions will be filled for a fixed term due to them pertaining to a specific project (positions of postdoctoral researcher shall always be filled for a fixed term, UEF University Regulations , Section 31).

The salary of the positions is determined in accordance with the salary system of Finnish universities and is based on level 5 of the job requirement level chart for teaching and research staff (€2,903.61/ month). In addition to the job requirement component, the salary includes a personal performance component, which may be a maximum of 50.0% of the job requirement component. The salary of a postdoctoral researcher is in the beginning around 3,300.00 - 3,500.00 euros.

For further information on the position, please contact (NOTCH): Associate Professor Tomi Kinnunen, email: tkinnu(a) cs.uef.fi, tel. +358 50 442 2647. For further information on the application procedure, please contact: Executive Head of Administration Arja Hirvonen, email: arja.hirvonen(a) uef.fi, tel. +358  29 445 3002.

A probationary period is applied to all new members of the staff.

You can use the same electronic form to apply for both research projects. The electronic application should contain the following appendices:

• a résumé or CV
• a list of publications
• copies of the applicant's academic degree certificates/ diplomas, and copies of certificates / diplomas relating to the applicant’s language proficiency, if not indicated in the academic degree certificates/diplomas
• motivation letter

The application needs to be submitted no later than February 28, 2019 (by 24:00 EET) by using the electronic application form.

Apply here.

Post-doctoral research position:

Extremely-low-resource radio browsing for humanitarian monitoring

Stellenbosch University, South Africa

A post-doctoral research position focussing on the automatic identification of spoken keywords in multilingual environments with extremely few or even no resources using state-of-the-art architectures is available in the Digital Signal Processing Group of the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering at the University of Stellenbosch. This is part of an ongoing project to develop wordspotters that can be used to monitor community radio broadcasts in rural African regions as a source of early warning information during natural disasters, disease outbreaks, or other crises. This phase of the project will consider several languages spoken in Mali, at least some of which are severely under-resourced and have not been the subject of speech technology research before. Specific project objectives include the development of a research system, the development of deployable system, the development of new methods and techniques and the production of associated publishable outputs. The position is part of a collaborative project with the United Nations Global Pulse. References to papers already produced as part of the project are listed below, and some general further information is available at http://pulselabkampala.ug/.

Applicants must hold a PhD (obtained within the last 5 years) in the field of Electronic/Electrical Engineering, Information Engineering, or Computer Science, or other relevant disciplines. Suitable candidates must have practical experience with automatic speech recognition systems in general and deep neural net architectures in particular, and should have an excellent background in statistical modelling and machine learning. The candidate must also have good programming skills and be able to use high level programming languages for developing prototype systems. Finally, candidates must have excellent English writing skills and have an explicit interest in scientific research and publication.

The position will be available for one year, with a possible extension to a second year, depending on progress and available funds.

Applications should include a covering letter, curriculum vitae, list of publications, research projects, conference participation and details of three contactable referees and should be sent as soon as possible to: Prof Thomas Niesler, Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, University of Stellenbosch, Private Bag X1, Matieland 7602. Applications can also be sent by email to: trn@sun.ac.za. The successful applicant will be subject to University policies and procedures.

Interested applicants are welcome to contact me at the above e-mail address for further information regarding the project.

References:

1. Menon, R; Biswas, A; Saeb, A; Quinn, J; Niesler, T.R. Automatic Speech Recognition for Humanitarian Applications in Somali. Proceedings of SLTU, Gurugram, India, August 2018.

2. Menon, R; Kamper, H; Yilmaz, E; Quinn, J; Niesler, T.R. ASR-free CNN-DTW keyword spotting using multilingual bottleneck features for almost zero-resource languages.. Proceedings of SLTU, Gurugram, India, August 2018.

3. Menon, R; Kamper, H; Quinn, J; Niesler, T.R. Fast ASR-free and almost zero-resource keyword spotting using DTW and CNNs for humanitarian monitoring. Proceedings of Interspeech, Hyderabad, India, September 2018.

4. Saeb, A; Menon, R; Cameron, H; Kibira, W; Quinn, J; Niesler, T.R. Very low resource radio browsing for agile developmental and humanitarian monitoring. Proceedings of Interspeech, Stockholm, Sweden, August 2017.

5. Menon, R; Saeb, A; Cameron, H; Kibira, W; Quinn, J; Niesler, T.R. Radio-browsing for Developmental Monitoring in Uganda. Proceedings of the 42nd IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing (ICASSP), New Orleans, USA, March 2017.

Aalto University

Aalto University is a community of bold thinkers where science and art meet technology and business. We are committed to identifying and solving grand societal challenges and building an innovative future. Aalto University has been ranked the 9th best young university in the world (Top 50 under 50, QS 2018) and one of the world’s top technology challenger universities (THE 2017), thinking outside the box on research collaboration, funding and innovation. Aalto has six schools with nearly 11 000 students and 4000 employees of which close to 400 are professors. Our campuses are located in the Capital Area of Finland. With 37% of our academic faculty coming from outside Finland, we are a highly international community with strong academic standing.

At Aalto, high-quality research, art, education and entrepreneurship are promoted hand in hand. Disciplinary excellence is combined with multidisciplinary activities, engaging both students and the local innovation ecosystem. Our main campus is quickly transforming into an open collaboration hub that encourages encounters between students, researchers, industry, startups and other partners. Aalto University was founded in 2010 as three leading Finnish universities, Helsinki University of Technology, the Helsinki School of Economics and the University of Art and Design Helsinki, were merged to strengthen Finland’s innovative capability.

Aalto University School of Electrical Engineering invites applications for an

ASSOCIATE OR ASSISTANT PROFESSOR IN SPEECH AND LANGUAGE TECHNOLOGY

We are looking for an associate or assistant professor to establish and lead a group of researchers and students within the speech and language technology research area at Aalto University. In this position, you will have a chance to make an impact in academic research and teaching as well as in society for example by industrial research collaboration. At Aalto University, you will have excellent research facilities and opportunities for interdisciplinary research with top-level researchers in machine learning, signal processing, acoustics, neuroscience and human-computer interfaces.

YOUR ROLE AND GOALS

Your tasks and responsibilities include conducting outstanding research and teaching as well as preparing research projects with funding from international and national sources. You supervise and recruit postdocs and PhD students and participate in teaching within the Computer, Communication and Information Science Master's Programme which is one of the most competitive at Aalto University.

SCIENTIFIC ENVIRONMENT

The professorship is situated at the Department of Signal Processing and Acoustics (in School of Electrical Engineering) where currently two out of ten tenured/tenure track professors work in the area of speech and language technology. Academy Professor Paavo Alku leads a group in speech communication technology and text-to-speech synthesis. The group is known particularly for its voice source research and its technical and interdisciplinary applications. Professor Mikko Kurimo leads a group in speech recognition and language modeling. His group is best known for developing successful language-independent models of morphologically rich languages and winning the MGB 2017 speech recognition challenge. These groups are also very well connected to the recently founded Finnish Centre of Artificial Intelligence (FCAI), which is a large collaboration effort for professors in machine learning and speech and language technology in both Aalto University and University of Helsinki.

YOUR EXPERIENCE AND AMBITIONS

We expect a strong track record of publications and achievements in speech and language technology, excellent teaching skills to help students to learn difficult topics, and motivation and competence to start and lead new and highly ambitious research projects aiming at significant scientific results and impacts. The professorship is open for qualified applicants from all areas of speech and language technology but we prioritize such fields, which enable research collaboration with the Department’s current groups in speech and language technology.

All applicants must have a doctorate in speech and language technology (or in a related area of engineering) and fluent command in English.

If you wish to hear more about the position, you can contact Academy Professor Paavo Alku or Professor Mikko Kurimo (firstname.lastname@aalto.fi). In recruitment process related questions, please contact HR Coordinator Saara Haggrén (firstname.lastname@aalto.fi).

READY TO APPLY?

If you want to join our community, please submit your application through our eRecruitment system no later than 31 March 2019.

To apply, please share the following application materials with us:

1. Cover letter

2. Curriculum vitae (with contact information and ResearcherID number)

3. List of publications in which the 7 most significant publications are highlighted

4. A research statement describing past research and plans for future research

5. A teaching portfolio describing teaching experience and plans for teaching

6. Contact information of possible references or at most 2 reference statements

All application materials should be submitted in English, in pdf format. The applications for the tenure track positions are to be addressed to the President of Aalto University.

From amongst the applicants in the first phase, Aalto University will select those who will be asked to visit Aalto University in May/June 2019.

Short-listed candidates’ applications will be submitted for review by external experts (the second phase of the application process).

General instructions for applicants including evaluation criteria, language requirements and guidelines for compiling teaching portfolio and CV are given at https://www.aalto.fi/tenure-track.

Aalto University reserves the right for justified reasons to leave the position open, to extend the application period and to consider candidates who have not submitted applications during the application period.

As a living and working environment, Finland consistently ranks high in quality-of-life. For more information about living in Finland: https://www.aalto.fi/services/about-finland.

The School of Informatics at the University of Edinburgh are currently recruiting faculty at the Lecturer/Senior Lecturer/Reader level (similar to Assistant/Associate Professor). Available positions are in the following areas:

In the Institute for Language, Cognition and Computation:
- Speech Technology
- Computational Social Science
- Computational Cognitive Science

In the Institute for Adaptive and Neural Computation:
- Machine Learning
- Computational Neuroscience and Artificial Intelligence

In the Institute for Computing Systems Architecture:
- Data-Centric Systems
- Networked Systems
- Operating Systems
- Systems and Hardware Security

In the Institute for Intelligent Systems and their Applications:
- Artificial Intelligence

Further information can be found here:

https://www.ed.ac.uk/informatics/about/work-with-us/vacancies/academic-recruitment

The Institution for Future is a newly established department in Qingdao University, nestling under the mountain and beside the sea in the beautiful coastal city of Qingdao. We have millions of funding and now seeking for some teammates who wish to lead the future with us. The following five labs are opening for candidates at all ranks (Post-Docs, assistant, associate, and full professor):

• Lab of Artificial Intelligence
• Lab of Robotics
• Lab of Intelligent Manufacture
• Lab of Unmanned Systems
• Lab of Fundamental Research

We are interested in candidates in broad areas, including but not limited to: control theory and technology, computer science, signal processing, robotics, unmanned systems, artificial intelligence. You will be given large freedom for your own research and/or industrial projects.

The assistant professor position and Post-Doc position is only for young scientists under 35. The Post-Doc position lasts about 2 years (usually no less than 20 months, no more than 3 years). Special offers are available for outstanding candidates now.

To apply or to request more information, please contact jwy1992@126.com as soon as possible. Application documents should include a detailed CV, publication record, your best 2 papers, and preferably a proposal for your future research.

Aalto University, Department of Signal Processing and Acoustics (Finland) invites applications for

Postdoc position in Speech Processing

The Department of Signal Processing and Acoustics is a part of School of Electrical Engineering at Aalto University (Finland). The department consists of four main research areas. The speech communication technology research group (led by Prof. Paavo Alku) works on interdisciplinary topics aiming at describing, explaining and reproducing communication by speech. The main topics of our research are speech production, particularly glottal source analysis, speech parameterization, speaking style conversion, and statistical parametric speech synthesis.

We are currently looking for a postdoc to join our research team to work on the team’s research themes. We are particularly interested in candidates with research interest in paralinguistic speech processing, especially related to human health, and in candidates with a background in machine learning –based acoustic-to-acoustic conversion (e.g. voice conversion). We also welcome strong candidates from other areas but previous experience in speech technology research is a must.

Postdoc: 2 years. Starting date: January-May 2019  

In Helsinki you will join the innovative international computational data analysis and ICT community. Among European cities, Helsinki is special in being clean, safe, Scandinavian, and close to nature, in short, having a high standard of living. English is spoken everywhere. See, e.g., http://www.visitfinland.com/

Requirements

The position requires doctoral degree in speech technology, computer science, signal processing or other relevant area, skills for doing excellent research in a group, and outstanding research experience in any of the research themes mentioned above. The candidate should have a strong background in machine learning and/or signal processing and previous experience in speech research. The candidate is expected to perform high-quality research and assist in supervising PhD students.

How to apply

If you are interested in this opportunity, apply by submitting the following documents in English and in electrical form (use the pdf format only!) by December 31, 2018. Send your application, CV, a transcript of academic records and references directly by email to Professor Paavo Alku. Please insert the subject line “Aalto postdoc recruitment, 2018”.

Additional information

Paavo Alku, paavo.alku@aalto.fi

In search of digital signal processing engineer to help in patent stage of new product. Must specialize in noise cancellation and /or voice recognition Must be able to develop concept in both hardware and software. Project will start upon finding ideal candidate. 1 week initial timeline with $150 compensation.  In addition, company equity will be offered upon successful completion and selection of your alpha version. Company location is in Dallas, but work will be done remotely.  If you are interested, please email your credentials and any work samples to mervininnovations@gmail.com

The Institute of Linguistics and Language Technology at the University of Malta is about to embark on a project called MASRI (MAltese Automatic Speech Recognition), the aim of which is to develop a speech recognition system for the Maltese language. The project is funded by the University of Malta Research Awards. The project has a vacancy for a post-doctoral researcher to join the team for 18 months (the position is referred to as a Research Support Officer III under the terms of employment at UM). Details of the post and instructions on how to apply are available here: https://www.um.edu.mt/__data/assets/pdf_file/0007/363562/FTRSOIII-MASRI-14.09.18.docx.pdf

The researcher engaged for this project will be responsible for the execution of the main tasks related to MASRI. The challenges in the project include the fact that Maltese is a low-resource language. Prior experience in speech recognition research is a must, and we have highlighted a number of important themes and skills that we are looking for in the call above. In particular, we are seeking individuals with a proven track record in research and excellent programming skills, with a sound working knowledge of deep learning techniques.