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PhD program in Natural Language Processing

The Department of Swedish will announce one (or more) fully funded four-year PhD position(s) in Natural language processing 5th September, 2016. The application deadline is midnight (24.00) CEST, 3rd October 2016.

The starting date for the PhD employment is 1st February, 2017, or as soon as possible after this date as per agreement, and the funding is available for four years of full-time PhD work. General and specific admittance requirements are described below under "Eligibility". PhD salaries follow a fixed payscale set by the university. PhD positions are regular salaried positions, meaning that PhD candidates should spend the major part of their working hours in the department.

Instructions and practical information to applicants

Application

The application is made online in the University of Gothenburg’s web-based Job Application Portal from 5th September, 2016. You will need to register as a user of the Job Application Portal through the login form at <https://gudok.gu.se/E-rek_CV/Login.aspx>.

The online form contains a number of tabs. Information or enclosures must be submitted via the following tabs: 2 Personal details, 3 Cover letter, 5 Education, 9 Attachments, 11 Job vacancies. Other tabs are not relevant to this application and should not be used.

The following must be submitted with the application in order for it to be considered. Applications not including all of the enclosures listed below may be considered incomplete and consequently not eligible on formal grounds. Enclosures 1, 3 and 4 are to be uploaded under tab 9 "Attachments" in the Job Application Portal while the text for 2 is to be submitted via tab 3 "Cover letter".

Please use descriptive file names for the uploaded documents. Note that the names must be unique. Avoid using space characters in the document names, and submit documents in pdf format only (as an exception to this, scans of certificates, etc., may be submitted in some digital image format).


  1. Educational certificate
    You must enclose an attested educational certificate listing the courses you have completed, including their extent (in ECTS credits). The certificate must show that you meet the general admittance requirements for postgraduate study as well as the specific admittance requirements specified in the syllabus for PhD studies in Natural language processing (both described below under "Eligibility"). If you do not meet these requirements, a separate document must be enclosed, where you clearly state on what grounds your qualifications can be said to correspond to the general and specific admittance requirements. Educational certificates in other languages than English, Swedish, Danish or Norwegian must be accompanied by a certified translation into one of these languages.

  2. Cover letter (submitted under tab 3 "Cover letter")
    You must enclose a brief essay (written in English, Swedish, Danish or Norwegian) where you reflect on your motives for applying to the postgraduate program. This cover letter is restricted to 3,000 characters in length (incl. spaces), corresponding to approximately one page of text.

  3. Project description
    You must enclose an independently written description of your intended PhD project (written in English, Swedish, Danish or Norwegian). The description is restricted to 24,000 characters in length (incl. spaces), corresponding to approximately 8 pages of text. The document format must be pdf without any kind of password protection.

    Your project description should present a specific research question, together with a theoretically and methodologically grounded discussion motivating why this particular question merits investigation.

    It should contain a brief survey of the research field presenting previous research and how your own proposed project relates to this research, in particular how your project will build on this earlier research and in what way it is expected to advance the field. It should further contain a methodology and data section where you discuss data requirements and availability, as well as the tools and analytical techniques with which you intend to address your research question. The project description may also contain a preliminary thesis outline and a commented rough time plan for the project.

    The project description should be written in such a way that the points listed above are treated as links in a structurally and logically coherent argument where the initial formulation of your research question serves as a foundation for everything that follows.

    The research in Natural Language Processing in the department is conducted in our language technology research unit Språkbanken (the Swedish Language Bank; <https://spraakbanken.gu.se/eng>), and, as characteristic of language technology research, each research project normally involves a group of researchers, including PhD candidates. Your project description should make clear how your research question could connect to ongoing research in Språkbanken. See <https://spraakbanken.gu.se/eng/research> and <https://spraakbanken.gu.se/eng/publications>, for an overview of the research activities. If other individuals have been involved in the development of your project description, even if only in an advisory capacity, the nature and extent of their involvement must be stated explicitly and contact information provided for the person(s) involved.

  4. Publications
    Enclose relevant publications in support of your application. In addition to any peer-reviewed conference and journal publications, you should include advanced-level theses. Up to five publications can be enclosed, including advanced-level theses; bibliographic information on any additional publications can be enclosed as a separate list. In order to be considered by the evaluators, the publications must be written in English, Swedish, Danish or Norwegian. In the case of co-authored publications, please specify the extent and nature of your contribution to the publication. Note that the full texts themselves must be uploaded, not abstracts or URLs. The document format must be pdf without any kind of password protection.

When you have submitted all the required information and documents, tab 11 "Job vacancies" is used for selecting the position for which you wish to apply.

For technical support concerning the Job Application Portal, please contact (rekrytering at gu dot se). Questions related to the application itself may be directed to Lars Borin, Professor of Natural Language Processing (lars dot borin at svenska dot gu dot se), phone +46 31 786 4544 (office), +46 70 747 8386 (mobile).

Eligibility

General admission requirements

To meet the basic admission requirements of PhD programs at the University of Gothenburg, applicants must have obtained a second-cycle degree, have completed studies of at least 240 higher education credits of which at least 60 credits were awarded in the second-cycle, have completed a corresponding program in some other country or be able to demonstrate the possession of equivalent qualifications.

Specific admission requirements, Natural language processing

At least 30 credits from second-cycle courses in Computational linguistics, Language technology, or Natural language processing, including a thesis of at least 15 credits


or


At least 30 credits from second-cycle courses in linguistics, including a thesis of at least 15 credits
, plus at least 30 credits from first-level courses in Language technology, Computational linguistics, Natural language processing, or Computer science.


or

At least 30 credits from second-cycle courses in Computer science, including a thesis of at least 15 credits, plus at least 30 credits from first-level courses in linguistics.

Note that the qualifying degrees must be dated no later than the deadline for the application.

Applicants must have good written and oral proficiency in English. Knowledge of Swedish is not a requirement.

Evaluation and ranking of applications

The project description and enclosed publications will be evaluated according to relevance and originality of the research question and feasibility of the research project. Both the general background and specific qualifications of the applicants will be taken into account in the evaluation, as well as the availability of sufficient thesis advising capacity in the department for the proposed PhD project.

A preliminary decision and evaluations of applicants will be communicated to the applicants by 5th December, 2016. Formal complaints may be lodged with the head of the department within two weeks after this date. The final decision will be announced by 19th December, 2016.

Thesis advisors and PhD candidates in Natural language processing

This information about available thesis advisors and current PhD candidates is provided in case you would like to direct enquiries to the individuals active in our research group. There is no requirement that you contact a thesis advisor in advance, and it will in no way influence the evaluation of your proposal whether you do or not.

Available thesis advisors in Språkbanken are:

At present, the following PhD candidates are enrolled in our PhD program:

Program descriptions and requirements

Program descriptions and formal requirements for the PhD and Licentiate programs in Natural Language Processing (pdf documents in Swedish):

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Page updated: 2016-12-16 11:24