A research position for one Research Grant (?Bolsa de Investigação?) is open at Instituto de Telecomunicações, in the scope of the Project MAIA ? Multilingual Virtual Agents for Customer Service ? Projeto Parceria Internacional CMU ref. 045909, funded by the applicable financial framework. The work for this position is in the area of Machine Learning and Natural Language Processing. The candidate should be enrolled in a MSc program. In the scope of the project the candidate will visit Carnegie Mellon University (a partner in the project).
Scientific Area:
Information and Data Sciences
Group:
Pattern and Image Analysis ? Lx
Admission Requirements:
Research grants are intended:

for students enrolled in a degree-conferring course to carry out R&D activities with the aim to consolidate their scientific training through the development of research work leading to the attainment of the respective academic degree or completion of the course (integrated or not in R&D projects).

for students enrolled in courses that do not confer an academic degree but which are integrated in an educational project of a higher education institution and are developed in association or cooperation with one or several R&D units.

In what concerns the admission requirements for this research grant in particular:

Be currently attending the M.Sc. Course or 2nd Cycle of an integrated M.Sc. Course, in Electrical and Computer Engineering, Informatics, Data Science, or equivalent scientific areas;

Excellent academic and practical background in programming, machine learning, and natural language processing, preferably in machine translation or grammar correction;

Have good knowledge of written and spoken English, be self-motivated and show initiative in solving problems;

Strong preference is given to candidates with immediate availability to initiate the work and sound knowledge of Python and Pytorch.

Work Objectives:
The goal of MAIA is to develop multilingual AI agents for customer support. The work done in this project will be developed in an internship at CMU with collaboration and co-supervision from IT. There are three tasks (related to Activities 3 and 4 in the project):

Investigate methods for grammar correction to reduce noisy sources and to improve robustness of machine translation systems;

Investigate methods for conversational quality estimation;

Investigate methods for reducing the need for labeled data.

These methods will leverage unlabeled data, such as monolingual text, which will used to pre-train parts of the network and help the target task via transfer learning.
Applicable legislation:
A fellowship will be celebrated according to ?Estatuto do Bolseiro de Investigação?, according to Law no. 40/2004, dated on 18th of August (Status of Scientific Research Fellow - https://www.fct.pt/apoios/bolsas/estatutobolseiro.phtml.pt), in its actual redaction, by Fellowship Regulation of Fundação para Ciência e Tecnologia (https://www.fct.pt/apoios/bolsas/regulamento.phtml.pt), according to Reg. 950/2019, dated on 16th of December, and also by ?Regulation of Instituto de Telecomunicações? fellowships?.
Place of work:
The work will be developed at the premises of Instituto de Telecomunicações ? Lisboa and Carnegie Mellon University, under the supervision of Professor André Martins.
Duration:
3 months, with the possibility of renewal (according to the regulations defined by FCT). Start date: June 1th, 2022 or soon thereafter.
Monthly salary:
1637,52 ? according to the table of grant amounts awarded directly by FCT for positions held in Portugal (www.fct.pt/apoios/bolsas/valores). The payment will be made by bank transfer.
Selection criteria:

• C1 (30%)
  Curriculum vitae/Academic performance
• C2 (30%)
  Previous experience in the aforementioned areas
• C3 (40%)
  Suitability of the candidates? profile to the project

Each criteria, and the final classification F will be evaluated in a scale (0-20). The candidates will be ordered according to:
F = C1 x 30% + C2 x 30% + C3 x 40%
In case of a tie, the tied candidates will be ordered according to C1, then C2...
The Jury has the right to not admit any of the candidates that applied for this position whenever they consider that no candidate meets the minimum requirements for the position.
Jury:

• Prof. Mario Alexandre Teles de Figueiredo, Instituto Superior Técnico (President of the jury)
• Prof. Ana Luisa Nobre Fred, Instituto Superior Técnico
• Prof. Hugo Humberto Plácido da Silva, Instituto de Telecomunicações Lisboa
• Prof. Alexandra Sofia Martins de Carvalho, Instituto Superior Técnico (Substitute)

Communication of the results:
Results will be published at the Instituto de Telecomunicações, Lisboa. The selected candidate will be notified by email.
Required Documents:
Cover letter explaining the interest in the position, detailed Curriculum Vitae with transcripts, Copy of the relevant certificates (Copy of the Degree Certificate(s), if applicable), and proof of enrollment (or proof of acceptance) in a higher education course or declaration of intention to enroll in a higher education course.
NOTE: The proof of enrollment in a higher education course must be made until the contract is signed.
Apply online clicking on the ?Apply Now? button.
After the notification of the results, candidates have 10 working days if they wish to contest the decision.
E-mail submissions will not be considered. (The cover letter and the CV are mandatory documents in the online application platform)
All the selection process is conducted through the IT web portal. No actions outside this platform are valid.
Application Period:
31-03-2022 to 13-04-2022
Assistance:
Send Email
Published on:
30-03-2022